#romulans are basically space elves

[alexeiadrae]

Was watching Picard with my family tonight. My almost 9 year old, when she saw the Romulan, Laris, asked, “Is that an alien or an elf?”

Also, I am having big nostalgic feelings about this likely being the last time I’ll see the Next Gen crew together. I love and adore them so much and I want them all to live forever and it is sad seeing how old and frail Patrick Stewart is getting. It’s incredible that we even got them together again for Picard and special to get to watch it with our kids.

And I’m probably going to be crying like a baby by the end of it.

[lol-jackles]

I’m amused AA had to repeat the same old massive forehead insult only to inadvertently diss Danneel too since she also has a big forehead. She also hasn’t aged that well even with all the work she’s had done. Jared has all the desired features of a conventionally good looking man. Chiseled jawline and high cheekbones, almond shaped blue green cat eyes, huge dimples which most people envy and wish they had. They have to reach so much to deny the fact Jared is an objectively beautiful man. They’ve even accused Jared of getting a nose job because his nose looks too thin and pointy, but then they’ll say he’s got an ugly wide nose in the next breath depending on what suits them. So transparent.

My longtime readers would clutch their bosoms when I said I didn't regard young Sam Winchester particularly attractive looking, especially when he had bangs (X). But some of the fault was the lighting in the early season, which did no favor for Jared's angular face and why people were often surprised to find Jared much better looking in real life than on screen. As he grew into his features, some of the surface smooth out and doesn't oppose the light source aimed at him.

Some male fans find Jared very good looking because he can play an elf popularized by Tolkien’s books and movies. Tolkien’s elves have  refined features and abundance of hair, are lithe, graceful, and possess heighten aesthetic awareness. Some might see that as feminine, but I think Tolkien see them as civilized.  Basically Tolkien’s elves are idealized human 2.0 - tall, athletic, beautiful, intelligent, and very dangerous.  In other words, those Jared fanboys are nerds.

Star Trek is basically Tolkien characters in space with Vulcans as space elves and Romulans as dark space elves; they’re highly intelligent, deadly, and beautiful or exotic in either appearance. Rarely are they handsome. 

Now somebody photoshop out the scruff and put in Tolkian elven tunic, robe, and tiara on him:

[sineala]

Queer novel recs

[A repost from my Patreon.]

By request of the one person who is pledging at a Patreon tier that lets them make meta/review requests of me, some recommendations for queer novels. Fiction-wise, I read pretty much exclusively science fiction and fantasy, with the occasional excursus into historical fiction, so that's what you're getting.

SF/F these days is, happily, getting queerer and queerer. As a general recommendation, a good place to start is the lists of winners and nominees of the Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Award), which, according to their website, "encourages the exploration and expansion of gender." There's also the Lambda Literary Awards, which are awarded to both fiction and non-fiction LGBT books across various categories, including genre (mystery, romance, SF/F & horror). It's obviously not going to be a guarantee that you'll like any particular one of these books, but at least it means that somebody did.

A whole lot of the Hugo award nominees and winners this year coincidentally happened to be queer fiction, especially in the longer categories. The Best Novel winner, Arkady Martine's The Memory of Empire, is a sprawling space opera starring a diplomat who incidentally (very incidentally) happens to have some Feelings for her cultural liaison, and it's a really good book, anyway. I actually voted for Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth, which is billed as "lesbian necromancers in space," and it is pretty much exactly that. It's a murder mystery, which you'd think would be less mysterious in a book where half the characters are necromancers, but this doesn't actually help them much. I thought it was delightful and I have the sequel sitting here on my Kindle waiting for me to read it. But had Gideon not stolen my heart, I would have voted for Kameron Hurley's The Light Brigade. Everything else I have read by Hurley -- well, okay, that's just the Bel-Dame Apocrypha series, actually -- has starred kickass queer people, and this one's no exception. It's military SF in the vein of Starship Troopers or The Forever War with a really well-done time travel plot, in which the twists just keep coming. The narrator's gender is intentionally obscured for about 95% of the novel, and for added fun, they're bisexual. (Charlie Jane Anders' The City in the Middle of the Night also had queer characters but it didn't really grab me.)

(I have to admit I bounced off a lot of the Hugo novella nominees this year, including most of the queer ones, but Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose The Time War (lesbian time-travel agents) did win, although it wasn't really my thing, and Rivers Solomon's The Deep (lesbian mermaids) appears to have gone on to win this year's Lambda instead, although that one wasn't really my thing either. Becky Chambers's To Be Taught, If Fortunate also had some lesbians and I liked that a bit better, but none of those got my #1 vote.)

I have not read it yet and cannot vouch for it but my wife is reading N. K. Jemisin's new short story collection and she says they're very good and a lot of them are queer.

Okay. So. What about less recent queer SF/F, you ask?

I started reading SF/F in the mid-90s, and there wasn't a whole lot of queer SF/F out there in the mainstream SF market, so I imprinted pretty heavily on what there was that I could find, which was basically, at first, the blink-and-you'll-miss-it gay dragonriders of Anne McCaffrey's Pern series. Pern is what The Youth these days would probably call problematic in several ways, but there wasn't much else out there. I also then read Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series, which is basically iddy iddy whump fic with magic telepathic animals who love you, so I'm not saying it's a complete literary masterpiece but Confused Baby Lesbian Sineala sure spent a lot of time wondering why she was identifying so very hard with Vanyel from the Last Herald-Mage trilogy. (I also really enjoyed Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books, especially the ones about the Renunciates (the lesbian ones), Heritage of Hastur (the gay one), and The Forbidden Tower (the one where a telepathic orgy solves everyone's problems) but owing to the, uh, terrible things we all found out about MZB after she died, I don't think I can recommend them. Or read them ever again.

Other older queer SF/F that was beloved among my friend group: Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint and its sequels are about a duelist and his boyfriend and a lot of people liked this one, but I never liked it enough to keep up with all the sequels. The first few of Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner books, however, punched me straight in the id; the protagonists are a pair of spies and thieves who are, more or less, this fantasy world's version of elves. There are a whole lot of grätúìtôūs dīåcrìtïcs and after the third book everything gets a little too horrific for me, but I really loved the first three.

But if I had to pick a top three list of authors who have written queer SF/F, this would be my list:

(1) Diane Duane. She is pretty much my favorite author ever, so I am biased here. I first discovered her work with her Star Trek tie-in novels (which, if you like Vulcans and Romulans, are amazing) and then her YA series Young Wizards, which is about teenagers who can do magic and use it to make the universe a better place and it's about ten thousand times more meaningful to me than Harry Potter ever was. But, anyway. She also has a fantasy series called The Tale of the Five, which is an everyone-is-bi-and-poly series started back before that kind of thing was even cool. Also there's a group marriage involving, like, six people, one of whom is a fire elemental. There are three books out in that series, she's still writing novellas set in it, and she swears that she's going to write the fourth and final book that we've been waiting about 25 years for.

(2) Melissa Scott. Everything I have ever read by Melissa Scott, either as a solo author or with her late partner Lisa Barnett, is queer as hell and has amazing worldbuilding. I first encountered her work when I randomly picked up Trouble and Her Friends (lesbian cyberpunk) at a used bookstore and ended up adoring it. Her other works include Shadow Man (set in a future where humanity has a whole lot more intersex people), The Kindly Ones (which has a protagonist whose gender is never specified), and The Armor of Light (alt-history involving Kit Marlowe and a demon). But my favorite series of hers is the Astreiant series, which is a Professionals AU with the serial numbers filed off, but they're filed off really well. It's a series of police procedural mysteries set in Fantasy Matriarchal Renaissance Netherlands, starring a m/m couple, and the fantasy gimmick here is that astrology is really real and really works. They're a lot of fun.

(3) Nicola Griffith. All of her books are about queer women. She has a few that are modern-day thrillers that I didn't so much care for, but I really love her SF. The first book of hers I read was Ammonite, about an anthropologist who gets sent to a planet of only women to try to figure out how they reproduce and ends up going native instead. I really adored it. I also remember really liking Slow River although I no longer remember the actual plot, except that the main character worked at a sewage facility. And it's historical fiction rather than SF, but she's probably most famous for Hild, a novel about Hilda of Whitby. I liked it a lot except for the part where it annoyed me that Griffith invented out of whole cloth the idea that women would have a special female companion and made up a name for it in Old English and everything, and most people who read the book probably believed it was a real thing. But, uh. I did really love Ammonite. I am so weak for planet-of-women books. (This is why I am so sad that I can't ever read the Renunciates of Darkover books again.)

That's about all I can think of right now. I hope some of those recs are, at the very least, new!

[the-drunk-game-master]

Explaining Star Trek TNG using Fantasy Races

(Also works Vice Versa) Okay, so Vulcans are basically space Elves. they live a crazy long time, are very snooty, pretend not to have emotions, and even have the pointy ears and weird eyebrows. Romulans are just like dark elves. they’re a splinter group (splinter race?) of Vulcans who got fed up with the emotional repression crap and split off to do their own thing. they sort of have a cold war thing going on with Vulcans and Humans, where they really wanna go to war, but keep using spies to try and trick the good guys into shooting first.

Ferengi are goblins, but uglier. Their society revolves around hypercapitalism, as they are the only civilization that still uses fancy rare metal to pay for stuff. In an age where replicators can just make golden coins, they found an even fancier metal.

Klingons are basically orcs, but also have dwarven traits to them. in the original series they were the bad guys, but they’ve brokered an alliance with the good guys in the new series. They’re whole culture revolves around honor and combat. It is every klingon’s wish to die an honorable death in combat, like Vikings or Samurai.  If a D&D campaign is going to have some good orcs, they’re almost always basically the same as klingons.

Finally,The Borg are the star trek equivalent of the undead. The borg cannot be bargained with, or reasoned with. Their goal is to assimilate all cultures into theirs, and so so by force.

where the undead hordes of fantasy settings are mindless, or perhaps guided by a single necromancer or lich, the Borg have a hive mind, seeing themselves as a single entity with many bodies. Each body is connected to the collective hive mind via cybernetic implants in their brains, and act in much the same way zombies do. large groups of borg will slowly walk at the good guys in star trek, not seeming to notice as they shoot and kill some of them. It only takes a single grasp for a sentient being to be ‘infected’ with the borg nanomachines, which will transform them into another borg drone.

There are plenty of other races, like the Cardassians, Bajorans, and Betazoids, but I couldn’t think of a way that the complex relationship between Cardassians and Bajorans fit into Tolkien or D&D-ish fantasy settings. 

[jakey-beefed-it]

AoS Lore Questions

Age of Sigmar lore people, help me out a bit here if you don’t mind. Can’t find definitive answers to the following on Lexicanum and was wondering if there are canonical answers or if everybody’s just sort of making up their own lore as they go.

So I know Stormcast Eternals are certainly more human than Space Marines, but how far does that extend? Are they basically Salamanders in that they do spend some time among their own people supporting actual communities but mostly focus on ass-kicking? Or do they have like, actual lives when they’re back in whatever place they live- friends (Stormcast or otherwise), responsibilities, a house, maybe even a family?

They seem to be phasing out the old Wood Elves line in favor of Sylvaneth which... I like Sylvaneth but I care a lot more about (A)elves than I do about tree-spirits. I know there are still some Wood Elves (”Wanderers,” they’re calling them now) kickin’ around in a few places (notably in the Plane of Life, I’d assume) but is this... is this going to be squats all over again? Or could I actually use my Glade Guard that I picked up to be Eldar Rangers ages ago as that and as “allied elf friends who like to hang with Vanguard Stormcast types and Hunt Evil”?

For that matter how ‘human’ are (a)elves in Fantasy/AoS? I know the Eldar think very differently than humans (it’s just as well honestly) in 40k, with highly compartmentalized minds and tightly controlled expression of their (intense!) feelings, but like... I know about vulcans, I know how to write Craftworlders. I know about romulans, I know how to write Drukhari. You get the idea. And while the High (A)elves in WFB/AoS seem very... Craftworld-y ...the wood elves always struck me as a lot more... sensible? Normal? Weird rustic woodsy folk with some nature magic who don’t like tresspassers... and have pointy ears which is really all that would distinguish them from a human woodland community with hedge druids. Is that impression accurate?

Dwarves for that matter seem to have been pretty thoroughly incorporated into a number of the Free Cities as just... folks. Which is great! One of my favorite bits of higher-fantasy D&D settings is having cosmopolitan cities and towns with a mix of fantasy races all living together and more or less getting along. I guess my question is are the elves doin’ that too, now? Because that would rock. How about lizardpeople/seraphon? Oh my god I need a skink shopkeeper to be a thing if it can be. 

Are half-[race] people a thing? Like half-elves, half-dwarves, half-elves/half-dwarves. Presumably no half-orruks given they work like 40k fungus orks, right? But how great would it be to have a blended family in some free city with a particularly sedate orruk working as like a... heavy manual laborer of some sort, married to a human or an elf or a dwarf, with little half-orruk babies? Probably not but I can hope I guess. 

To sum up: although I like power fantasies as much as the next nerd, I also have a hard time getting invested in my Named Characters unless they have like... lives outside of Endless Battle that they’re aspiring to get back to/defend/what have you. AoS seems a lot friendlier to “as long as you’re not literally in thrall to the Dark Gods and/or Death itself, you’re basically just a person and can have like... a measure of domesticity” than 40k certainly, but also more than WFB did. Am I right about that, or is the lore still really stodgy? I mean I’ll ignore the lore if I don’t like it but it would be nice to not have to for once. :p

[ao3feed-tolkien]

like warriors from the ancient sagas

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2OV6bry

by fm1978

“Far across the stars, in a region of space known in the Federation as the Triangle, and specifically in the Celindi nebula, lies a small Minshara class world,” Gandalf said, pointing at a planet near the center of the map. “‘The Lonely Planet’?” Bilbo read. --- Bilbo Baggins finds his life turned upside down when an old friend shows up with a group of Klingons and an adventure to be had, and discovers things amongst the stars he never could have imagined: strange new worlds, new friends, new enemies, and a strange object that enhances his telepathy. What can possibly go wrong? --- The Hobbit-Star Trek fusion AU

Words: 5282, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, Fíli (Tolkien), Kíli (Tolkien), Gandalf | Mithrandir, Bofur (Tolkien), Balin (Tolkien), Dwalin (Tolkien), Bifur (Tolkien), Bombur (Tolkien), Ori (Tolkien), Nori (Tolkien), Dori (Tolkien), Elrond Peredhel, Erestor (Tolkien), Thranduil (Tolkien), Tauriel (Hobbit Movies), Legolas Greenleaf, Radagast | Aiwendil, Galadriel | Artanis, Saruman | Curunír, Gollum | Sméagol, Smaug (Tolkien), Azog (Tolkien), Dís (Tolkien), Other Character Tags to Be Added, basically everybody from the hobbit

Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Kíli (Tolkien)/Tauriel (Hobbit Movies)

Additional Tags: okay so it's the hobbit but instead of middle earth they're in the starfleet universe, there are gratuitous star trek references in here, dwarves are klingons, elves are vulcans, hobbits are betazoids, humans are...humans, gandalf and the other wizards are q, orcs are romulans, smaug is...a surprise :), also this is set after the original series movies but before star trek: the next generation

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2OV6bry

[lol-jackles]

Hey there. Something pretty to take your mind off all the craziness: Did you see those face app manips of Jared as a woman at samanddeanunited's page? I saw the one you posted of them all a long time ago but this one has many SPN scenes and my does he have delicate bone structure! He's a gorgeous man and he'd make a gorgeous woman! Worth a look. I like samanddeanunited, she's a cool Jared girl who seems to have a rational head on her shoulders. Cheers.

Ha, us old farts have seen the “craziness” at least three times in our lifetime and we know how it’s going to end, at least half of the liberal wokees are going to be right-wing zealots in five months or ten years.

When some guys say Jared is the better looking of the J2 it’s because he can play an elf popularized by Tolkien’s books and movies. Tolkien’s elves have  refined features and abundance of hair, are lithe, graceful, and possess heighten aesthetic awareness. Some might see that as feminine, but I think Tolkien see them as civilized.  Basically Tolkien’s elves are idealized human 2.0 - tall, athletic, beautiful, intelligent, and very dangerous.  In other words, those Jared fanboys are nerds.

Star Trek is basically Tolkien characters in space with Vulcans as space elves and Romulans as dark space elves; they’re highly intelligent, deadly, and beautiful or exotic in either appearance or mystery, rarely are they handsome.  If you ever want to trigger an AA stan whisper in their ears “Jared is exotic looking”.  

.

I’ve heard speculations that the real life Tolkian elves are ancient Chinese.  Hmmm, remember when fangirls sigh over Jared’s asiatic eyes for a spell?

Now somebody photoshop out the scruff and put in Tolkian elven tunic, robe, and tiara on him: