#lymond blogging

[venndaai]

I thought about Jerott and Marthe in Checkmate for a bit too long today. send help.

[intyalote]

MARTHE 😍🔥💯🫡👀🥰👌❤️😘

[sophosthewisebunny]

Thinking about how Marthe “my brother stole my girlfriend so I’ll just marry his sad repressed alcoholic boyfriend who’s still convinced he’s in love with me and not with my brother” Blyth spent an entire book trying to fix said brother’s marriage. Bestie I love you but you’re the last person I’d take relationship advice from

[unhelpfulfemme]

[aldieb]

i don’t think it would be good for most ppl’s health to read house of niccolo but i need the world to see this piece of dialogue from this very serious series about the upper limits of human endurance in suffering + the worst family relationships you probably couldn’t even imagine unprompted. upon the occasion of an upcoming joust against a much more skilled opponent: “Well, you’d better organize a great big Dane as a first joust for Sersanders. Otherwise I’ll sulk in my tent and leave the fight to my armour; I’m training six ferrets to activate it. What’s it like to be drunk?”

[faustandfurious]

I saw this thing where you pick five fictional characters you like and let your followers vote on which one you’re most similar to, and though nobody tagged me, I wanted to try it.

Tagging @ramyun-monster, @testudoaubrei-blog and @cassowariess because I want to see your versions of this poll too

[eightopals]

About Murderbot and Casting

This topic is heating up with the news of the planned Murderbot TV show.

I should know by now that 80% or more of fans don’t bother actually checking out anything authors say about the appearances of characters in written works. Instead, they just cast whatever actor they fancy at the moment, regardless of that actor’s looks. (It’s not just Murderbot. I’ve seen tons of bad fan casting for properties like the Lymond Chronicles as well.)

I’m talking about canon descriptions and clues to appearance, like specifically ethnic names.

Folks, it’s pretty plain that the majority of the Preservation Aux people are various shades of brown. There’s a great post here on tumblr that goes into the origins of their names:

I have an impression, though, that for a lot of people, these are just made-up science fiction names. They haven’t had the warm, fuzzy experience of recognizing a character’s name or other ethnic identifiers and thinking “she’s like me!”

Quite aside from Ratthi’s name, Wells said in her LiveJournal blog that “Ratthi is super hot. We're talking Sendhil Ramamurthy levels of hot.” OK, that’s not in the canon work. But she’s the author, dudes.

It’s bad enough that the series is proposing very northern European-looking Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot itself. Watching folks try to whitewash the rest of the cast too is painful.

OK, rant over, back to the usual stuff.

[leojurand]

i was thinking about the poll someone made last year on their blog that was something like "who's your favourite side character in the lymond chronicles?" (i don't remember if it was side characters, but basically every important character except francis and philippa was there)

and i'm curious to see what the results would be here on tumblr. because in that poll archie and kate were the undisputed winners, but i think people on here appreciate the. messy characters more lol

[bloody-wonder]

How do you find new books to read? Most people I ask say booktok, which sorry if I'm wrong but I assumed you wouldn't use, and I haven't had good results from trying booktok.

good question!

no i don't use booktok or tiktok in general. in fact, i have a very old man yells at cloud attitude towards it lol. i do watch lots of booktube tho and get some recs from there, however it's important to remember: many people are hyping up a book >> probably not a good rec🙅‍♀️ "if so many people like it i might like it too" that's the fomo devil talking! one booktuber is swearing by a book you have never heard of and gushing about it in their every other video >> probably a good rec👍that's how i came across the aurelian cycle and the winnowing flame. idk maybe it works on booktok the same way if you follow the right people but. i don't trust that app😅

other recs i get from my trusted mutuals on tumblr bc these are people who enjoy the same type of sophisticated literature as i do so when one of them mentions they read and liked a book my interest is peaked. when they constantly mention it it has the same effect as when your mutual reblogs three gifsets of a show - now you just have to watch it bc you know from previous experience you will likely enjoy it. i think i first heard of doctrine of labyrinths in worldhoppers' underrated fantasy video but it would've sat on my goodreads tbr forlornly till the end of time had i not found out that it's popular with the lymond crowd - no rec is more reliable than that😌

finally, good book recs tend to come from obscure rec lists i perused on tumblr or on goodreads or on some old-fashioned book blog several years ago, added them to my tbr and then forgot. but bc i like to update my tbr regularly i go through the 1000+ books i have on goodreads each year in order to decide if i want to move them up my priority list and inevitably discover some hidden gems i scavenged this way back when i was getting back into reading. for example, i found the dreamhealers series and the memoirs of lady trent on the aroace characters database and i found nino cipri's litenverse on one of the numerous queer sff rec lists here on tumblr.

generally tho there is no perfect source of book recs that works all the time. understanding your own tastes and choosing books accordingly is a skill you develop by trial and error and no matter how good you get at curating your reading many books you pick up will likely disappoint you nonetheless🤷‍♀️

[venndaai]

The Game of Kings actually has the lowest level of Lymond boyfriends of any book in the series, with only 1 male suitor (Will) who actually gets any attention from the narrative, though George Douglas and the judge at the end also clearly want to fuck him.

The stats go like:

TGOK: 1 (Will)

QP: 3.5 (Robin, d’Enghien, d’Aubigny, The French Court)

TDK: 4 (Will, Jerott, Gabriel, Adam) (I’m counting Adam even though he’s only confirmed romantic pining in a later book)

PiF: 4 (Jerott, Gabriel, Míkal, the Agha Morat)

RC: 4 (Adam, Danny, Ivan the Terrible, Chancellor)

QP: Back down to 3 (Jerott, Danny and Adam again. The survivors, with no one new introduced because Philippa is now co-protagonist collecting the obsessive young men herself.)

[whodunnett1526]

Ok beloved(s)… it’s been years, but I’m visiting Bruges this summer and I’ve been seeing a lot of incredible Dunnett content on here and ppl getting into the books for the first time, so I think it really is time for a reread (and this time I’m reading on Libby, so there’s a good chance I’ll actually finish since it sort of keeps me accountable). My plan is straight through niccolo, then lymond (and then maybe I’ll give King Hereafter a try) and I’m going to try to do select updates on this blog, just for fun; either way I’ll definitely be reblogging a lot more content as I get in the zone. Excited to get back into it with y’all 🫶

[sophosthewisebunny]

I thought I needed a red string board for the parentage fuckery in Pawn in Frankincense but Checkmate. Checkmate man.

[hellotailor]

gradually deleting hundreds of years-old questions from my askbox (sorry to you all...) and thought i should answer a few FAQs:

1. if you want to know if we've covered a movie on Overinvested, all public eps can be found on the podcast website and should be available on all major podcast networks. (we will get round to posting a list of the Patreon-only eps as well, which includes several standard reviews and listener Q&As, plus watch-along audio commentary tracks for Avatar, the Star Wars prequels and the LOTR trilogy.)

2. if you sent me a message to say you discovered Black Sails or the Lymond Chronicles or Yuri on Ice thru my blog... i'm so glad you enjoyed them!! and i can only hope to have a similar effect proselytizing victoria goddard's epic cosy fantasy novel The Hands of the Emperor (and its incredibly satisfying new sequel).

2.5. if you're concerned about depictions of sexual violence in Black Sails S1, you can find a list of trigger warnings/timestamps here.

3. if you want to recommend a fanfic in the Rec Center, use the submission form here.

4. i have no plans to watch the Clone Wars animated show - i'm aware of the general canon (thanks to reading dozens of codywan fanfics lmao) but the few eps i watched didn't really grab me. not sure why so many people asked me about this but there ya go.

p.s. my askbox remains open.

[veliseraptor]

aloha lise! i've been following you for years and i realize we somehow always end up in the same fandoms or i enjoy most of the stuff you "promote" on your tumblr! so because of your impeccable taste, i would like to ask if you have any recommendations for books and shows?

(i very much enjoyed mcu (mostly loki and stoki thanks to you HAHA), mdzs, cql, tgcf, svsss, lymond chronicles, doctrine of labyrinth...many of the same fandoms that you are in and i got to know and like many of them thanks to you!)

hello and thank you! I certainly have well-defined tastes at the very least. I have fun and that's what matters

as far as recommendations go...oh lord anon, I read...a lot, and watch somewhat less but have still watched a lot of things, and mostly the things I do fandom for are a smaller subset of the things I like. so I almost don't know where to start with this? I guess right off the bat I'm presently rewatching The X-Files which I'm very much enjoying, and if you haven't Kinnporsched yet you might give it a try. outside of that...I wrote a recs list a long time ago that was basically "my personal 'essential fantasy/scifi' list" and favorite books/favorite books of the decade posts. You can also check my #book recs tag or my #book starter kits tag.

if you haven't read The Silmarillion I'll throw The Silmarillion on here too even though it has next to nothing in common with the other things on the list you gave. I recently finished reading the Green Bone Saga by Jane Fonda and definitely recommend that. if you hang around this blog on a regular basis I've started doing monthly reading recaps going over everything I read in the prior month and a snapshot of my thoughts on it, so there might be some recs in there for you, too.

if you enjoyed MXTX's works I will recommend trying out some other danmei, of which there are...very many. I'm a big fan of 2HA or Husky and his White Cat Shizun, which is...being published officially, though slowly, and unfortunately never had a complete alternate (human) translation online. I'm really enjoying QJJ which is basically a historical epic of war and political intrigue in the classical style that happens to have gay main characters.

I'm reading LHJC and have been enjoying it but the translation has gone quiet for a while and is incomplete. :(

this is all fiction and also reading material...I read a lot of nonfiction as well. I do watch things once in a while but really I'm very bad at it. several things on my list that I'm sure I'll enjoy when I eventually get to them but just. haven't yet. of course right now I am forgetting everything I have ever watched in my entire life. Princess Mononoke and The Last Unicorn are foundational movies that shaped my personality. Le Chevalier d'Eon is the weirdest anime nobody else I know has ever seen. I've really enjoyed what I've seen of Kingdom and My Country: The New Age but haven't yet finished either.

lord, what other shows/movies have I even watched

[notasapleasure]

Fic Writer 20 Questions

I've been tidying out my likes and remembered @elwenyere's open invitation tags on this, too, so here we go!

sshysmm's works on ao3 (user name is a ref to my old tumblr)

1) How many works do you have on ao3

128 (and I think I'm missing some of the band AU stuff I never moved over from the blog @theartistknownaslymond…)

2) What's your ao3 word count?

1,038,645 words. haha. what the fuck.

3) What fandoms do you write for?

Actively, right now: Star Wars (particularly Andor; previously Rogue One and a few spin-off novels), the Lymond Chronicles, and I do very much intend to return to my fics for And Then We Danced.

I have also written for Ripper Street, The Terror, The Musketeers (don't look! don't look! it's my 'now can i remember how to write fic after over a decade out of fandom fic) and Utopia (another one it would be cool to add to after I get a chance to rewatch).

4) What are your top five fics by kudos?

good god they're all Jyn/Cassian. it's the only big ship I've written for I suppose

Be alright tomorrow (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian) Hope in the air (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian) Singer, save our secular souls (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian) To steal what she never could own (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian) Delayed gratification (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian)

5) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to!! Sometimes when I'm deep in the writing hole I just stay away from ao3 so as not to ?? idk?? make myself feel guilty? get distracted? so it can take me a while to respond.

When people are reading updates as I post them I try to respond quicker! I like to respond to acknowledge how grateful I am to people who took the time to read and cheerlead and say something nice. To show I appreciate it and the time they spent on it. If it possibly leads to discussion about what's going on in the fic then so much the better!

6) What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably just Hope in the Air, for sticking with the canon Rogue One ending and leaning into the sense that even if he got to a bacta tank, Cassian's in a pretty bad way. Also Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing (Ripper Street), again for…following canon, dealing with Deborah's decision to stop seeing Reid and Emily's descent into a place where Reid feels he has to have her sent to the asylum.

7) What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Jerott wish-fulfilment!! The ransoun made, the prisoneris redeemit (Lymond Chronicles, Francis/Jerott).

8) Do you get hate on fics?

I don't think I've had any hate on ao3, no. Some blunt comments when I hadn't done my research on aurebesh well enough/resued a plot device, but not hate.

9) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Yes? All kinds? Idk, I'm trying to get more creative, though traditionally I think I write emotionally knotty, not-always-satisfying sex that does heavily lifting on the characterisation. And is also hot.

10) Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I haven't posted it on ao3 yet, but there's the Lymond Chronicles 1980s band AU crossover with And Then We Danced, which is just like. The nichest of nichey niches. Can't believe there are like three people who might read it, so it's still not as unpopular as a medieval Icelandic saga au of a niche Andor ship written in the first person. I didn't go out of my way to drive readers away, I swear!!! Please give The Saga of the Coal-biter and the Skraeling a chance, it's my precious baby.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge, lol. I think more people would need to want to read my fics first.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I'm open to it if anyone wants! I have had two podfics made of my works, which has been lovely!

13) Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

No, though there was a fun Lymond Pawn in Frankincense AU which started as me and @erinaceina spit-balling about Philippa getting captured by GRM and Khaireddin surviving, and @stripedroseandsketchpads wrote some nice whumpy scenes about it!

14) What's your all time favorite ship?

Oh, usually whatever I'm writing at any given time. Faramir/Éowyn was formative influences, though.

15) What's a WIP you'd like to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I really don't like admitting that I don't think I'll finish something. I do have 17 subscribers(!!??) to a Lord Bateman (Child ballad 53) inspired Rogue One AU (What would you give?) so even though finishing that is very low down my priorities I'd hate to say outright that I wouldn't return to it.

16) What are your writing strengths?

Emotion, description, description of emotion… capturing micro-expressions and little tics that define a character. Because of this I think I'm pretty good at making people in-character even in weird settings. Writing people who aren't good or bad, just flawed and affected by their lived experiences. Creating an atmosphere. Also, when I pull it off, making you laugh one moment at something ridiculous and then sucker-punching you in the gut :')

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

That when I'm asked to think of my strengths I go blank. That I constantly, constantly overthink things when I've posted them in case I wrote something that will be horribly misunderstood or just actively bore established readers into giving up. The fear that what I enjoy writing is so inherently dull no one else will enjoy reading it, that I'm not setting out to 'write fic' but to write something pretentious and beautiful and that's not what anyone reads fic for. Also oh my god I need to learn brevity. Simple plots. Don't overthink the plot Jo. I what-if my plots to death and then find myself disgusted by all the ways they're inadequate. Actually what all this comes down to is a controlling urge in my writing: I want to control every detail of this scene, including where the information is lacking, and I worry that if I leave anything to chance I'll be misunderstood. But at the same time I love ambiguity and gaps and leaving things open to interpretation. Inside me there are two wolves and one adores unanswered questions while the other suffers from a neurodivergent urge to info-dump in order to make sure everything is clear.

18) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I'd love to quote from Umberto Eco's author's note to The Name of the Rose, where he argued with his publisher about keeping Latin dialogue in! Ony my copy of the book is in storage. Also there's the whole…I'm a fan of the Lymond Chronicles. If there isn't untranslated dialogue in at least five different languages why are you bothering? And yeah I very much did learn a language because of a film and then spent a lot of time considering how communicating in this language as opposed to English would affect the dialogue and interactions I was writing. So yes, dialogue in another language when it's properly contextualised is good - not when it's random phrases of unnecessary Space Spanish because someone's exoticising Diego Luna.

19) First fandom you wrote for?

I'm of the generation where it was inevitably H*rry P*tter, if we're talking internet published fanfic. But as a kid I did keep diaries full of drawings and stories about Sandokan the tiger and Bucky O'Hare.

20) Favorite fic you've ever written?

I have like. Post-partum depression about the saga AU right now because seeing it interact with the world makes me doubt myself horribly, but realistically, it's my beloved child. It's just having to carry all my grad school trauma as well as all my past Star Wars fandom trauma and you know what?? It's good enough to do that. It is. It's the first of a trilogy, and I WILL finish the trilogy.

As previously said by elwenyere: Open tags for anyone who would like to play!!! This was very fun: @ me with your answers if you'd like to join. <3<3<3

[thecrenellations]

slowly and most likely semi-temporarily morphing into a Lymond and Untamed blog. In my defense, there is a lot about The Untamed here. And there is also a lot about Lymond here ... Here, in people's Lymond tags through which I am devotedly digging. Also, I like both of them.