happy glorious 25th of may

Vorkosigan

   The thing I love about the Vorkosigan Saga* is that MOST protagonists who go hogwild for Found Family are trying to replace a biological family that is absent or unsatisfactory. Miles comes from a family where his parents love each other dearly and adore their hyperactive disabled son - and he STILL goes out into the galaxy and says

To the strung out jump pilot that he literally met minutes ago - I’ll just adopt YOU here put your hands between mine for the ceremony

To the homeless military deserter who would be under sentence of death if anybody knew where he was OH HEY, you’re mine, too, come with me to my [new] ship with the pilot I’ve known a whole day, now

To the soldier who got her face burned in the first big battle MA’AM I will get you the best possible reconstructive surgery plus also you are family, now

To the 8-foot tall genetically engineered nightmare with fangs crouched in a dungeon (sorta) MISS you are so tall and beautiful I will break you out of here and you can join my mercenaries plus also I want to take care of you at the end of your life, because I love you so much

To the unauthorized CLONE who was raised to assassinate his politically important father WELL, dude, legally you’re my brother so you should really go home and meet Mom and Dad

I just. Love those books so much.

* Lois McMaster Bujold, author

I think a surprising amount of writers don’t realize that tragedies are supposed to be cathartic. They’re intended to result in a purging of emotion, a luxurious cry; the sorrow caused by a great tragedy is akin to fear caused by a good horror movie – it’s a “safe” sorrow, one that is actually satisfying to the audience. It can still be beautiful! It’s isn’t supposed to just be salting the earth so nothing can grow.

But that’s how you get grimdark: writers who don’t realize that they’re supposed to be doing something with the audience instead of to the audience.

One Piece is special because Oda will introduce Bozo McStupidface, former chief chucklehead of Weird Freak Island and make you cry uncontrollably over their tragic backstory of family, genocide, disease and proletariat struggle.

to succeed in adult friendship you must remember the key tenets of child friendship:

Play Toys

Play Pretend

Snack Time

when one piece said "existing is not a crime" and when it said "thank you for loving me" and when it said "tell me you want to live" and when it said "being alone is worse than being hurt" and when it said "you're my friend" and when it said "someday you will find kind people" and when it said "there are people out there who will love you" and when it said

It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

So where’s this silly shallow hippie fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

NEW VERSION. :)

"why can't they just be friends" not in the homophobic way but in the "their platonic relationship in the source material is far more dynamic and complex than the sanitized personalities they gain as a result of shipping" way

Wisdom from C.S. Lewis

People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person, you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change — not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one.

In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last.

The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means.

In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest.

What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and become a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.

This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go — let it die away — go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow — and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.

But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life.

It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

Excerpt from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

First Post!

I deleted my old tumblr because... man idk why it was covid-times and the prefrontal cortex was not in the room with us!! Anyways, I was reminded by my lovely friend @repecca that tumblr exists, and that some of my work has been going around on here, so I decided to post some of my work up officially! Starting off with my most notable (?) work to date, here's my LOTR: The Middle Kingdom Project. Now, it's been over a year since I posted this, and at the time I was... really searchingfor myself artistically, and I decided to go all in on something that I'd been ruminating on for a long time.

So, hello, again. I'm Leia. I do visual development/BG design, and I'm also a writer of things. I love fantasy and transformative work. It's nice to meet you.

They caught me singing at my funeral, and dancing to my dirge,

They caught me heckling my eulogy, and joy-riding my hearse.

They caught me spray-painting my tomb stone and teasing the mortician,

They caught me at all sorts of mischief, in grand Christian tradition.

They scolded me, I put my face into my hands to hide

The smiles and the giggles I couldn’t keep inside.

They didn’t want to hear the joke that I had learned so well,

That death has no dominion: my God has rattled hell.

Art by Ami Thompson

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries: The most autistic book ever.

Boromir Lives AU: We Didn't Have a Choice

Alternate title is They're All Just Kids With PTSD, Your Honor

This (ridiculously long? omg why so long, I did not mean for it to be this long) comic is a good example of how my plotlines usually develop---I'll write what I think is a self-contained story and then realize there are whole new narratives beyond it. This is how my first novel, Woodwalker, became a trilogy---I was writing it as a standalone novel until about the last three or four chapters, when I realized I'd kicked off a whole new series of political events. For this AU, I was thinking about how it would feel for Elboron to grow up in the long shadow of his parents, and idolizing his uncle(s) while also wondering how he'd ever measure up. For Boromir, I think he'd be so fulfilled to see his nephew get to come of age in a gentler world that he and his brother and all the others didn't get. Though if he had a future as anything other than a soldier I'm pretty sure it would be as a TikTok star showing us how to create a perfect ballerina bun. Show us your products, Boromir, dang.

This comic also reminded me that I clearly have a distinct set of author tropes because this has STRONG Veran vibes (Sunshield, Floodpath), with a young character feeling overwhelmed with the legacies of his parents. This is a bit of an opposite arc, though--- Veran wants to follow in his mother's footsteps but isn't allowed to, and so gravitates toward diplomacy, while Elboron feels pressured to take up soldiering like his namesake but would rather study language. Come to think of it, the manuscript I turned into my agent a few weeks ago also has some of these themes, which either means I need to stop writing quest follow-ups or start a Protagonists With Heroes For Parents support group.

--------------

Boromir Lives: Helm's Deep

Boromir Lives: Whump-Time After Pelennor

Boromir Lives: GO TO SLEEP

Boromir Lives: Aragorn's Coronation

Boromir Lives: Faramir and Eowyn's Wedding

Boromir Lives: It's a BABY

Boromir Lives: High Uncle of the White Tower

Boromir Lives: The Haircuts

Ok that last point not only hit me square in the kidneys but it reminded me to go get my reading glasses before opening AO3, so thanks for that!

Yknow, when you keep insisting that adults can’t enjoy fandom or play video games or what cartoons or whatever, it’s other young people that you’re hurting the most. Because the most you’ll do to adults is offend or annoy them with that nonsense, but when you plant that idea in a kid’s head, they grow older with the horrible dread looming over them that the things that bring them happiness and comfort have an expiration date. When I was a young adult, I was genuinely depressed about the thought of getting older because I thought I couldn’t keep enjoying all my hobbies, like I had to give up everything I enjoy once I reach [x] age.

And that is simply not true. It’s bullshit. But the harm is does to people is very real. Kids are so afraid of getting older, and one of the big fears is that their life will become painfully bland and boring once they hit adulthood, as if all adults do is work and pay taxes, possibly raise kids. No more fun, no whimsy, no playfulness, no joy.

Anyway, I’m 33 and I love video games and fanfiction and cartoons. If you tell me I’m too old for that stuff, I’ll roll my eyes and block you and go on with my day. But I will worry about the 17 year old who saw your post too and feels a sinking in their chest at the thought that they have to give up the stuff that makes them happy. THAT’S what bothers me.