Fandoms – Lord of the Rings

Today’s blog entry is going to be a giant ramble about Lord of the Rings. I’ll probably get to the Hobbit later. It’s also a little late because I’m writing it just now, I’ve been kind of lax with the writing schedule because I’ve been working ten to twelve hours a day and I have absolutely no inclination for writing once I get home. In fact, I had an extra day off and I spent most of it sleeping instead of writing. So, this is going to be mostly about the Jackson movies because it was so long ago since I read any of Tolkien’s stuff, probably it’s been about maybe twenty years now, more honestly, if I think about it. I’ve been watching The Hobbit lately because of course, one can’t watch the Lord of the Rings and not watch The Hobbit. I don’t know why everybody complains they are not great movies. Well, I mean they aren’t great movies but they’re great in the fact that they are entertaining. They do what I want them to do as far as media consumption is concerned.  

This is probably going to be short and disjointed but hopefully entertaining. Honestly, I hate the “Redemption through Death” trope, and both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings have this. So, I’ve probably mentioned my retcon “The Destiny of a King” where Boromir Lives. The problem I have with his death is that even though he was under the influence of the Ring he was perceived as a villain and he although he tried to take it, he redeemed himself of his transgression by fighting for Merry and Pippin. Now I acknowledge that plot-wise his death was important in spurring Aragorn to embrace his legacy as King, but I take issue with Aragorn’s perceptions of Boromir. It is one of the many things that I believe had the deck stacked against him in terms of the arrangement of the fellowship. The one Man in the group who should have been Boromir’s ally has internalised distaste of his own race. As much as I love Elrond, Aragorn was brought up with the elf’s pretty blatant distaste for Men. Elrond bases his entire argument that men are weak on the failing of Aragorn’s ancestor, and it influences Aragorn’s reluctance to take the throne of Gondor. So, when confronted by the very reminder of his responsibility Aragorn has no sufferance for Boromir.

This also related to Frodo, because of the story Aragorn told him about the Kings of Men that were now the Ringwraiths. Because of this Frodo now probably believes any Man who wants to use the ring is wicked or will fall into wickedness. So, you can imagine when Boromir suggests they use the Ring during the council that this does not endear him to Frodo. As for the council meeting, I get this feeling that no one bothered to adequately explain to Boromir why using the ring was bad. He gets admonished in front of his peers of other nations and is pretty much told that he should “hush the grownups are talking, you don’t know enough to have an opinion.” Then, he is also further humiliated by being told he should owe his allegiance to a man who has been shirking his responsibilities for decades. Despite all of this, Boromir still volunteers to go on what could be considered a suicide mission for the sake of saving Middle Earth, other Men in the council could have gone.

So, circling back to the structure of the Fellowship, and why inherently it was one of the reasons Boromir fell prey to the Ring. As the other Man in the group, he had no emotional support to lean on. It’s not mentioned in the movie but Boromir should know Gandalf as Mithrandir since he was Faramir’s tutor. However, there is no connection with the ‘mysterious’ wizard as there is almost no interaction with him and Boromir throughout the entire story. The others already have connections within the group. All of the halflings have each other by way of both race and familiarity. Aragorn had already made friends with the Hobbits, they trust and admire him for saving them. There is the perception that Aragorn most likely knows Legolas, as there is a familiarity with elves already established there. Even if Gimli did not know Legolas before the Fellowship was formed, he knows of him from his father Gloin because of the part the Mirkwood elves played in the Battle of the Five Armies. Now I must point out that even though he made what seems like good friends with Merry and Pippin, he does not seem to connect with them on an ‘adult level.’ The reason I say this is his conversation with Aragorn in Lothlorien. Boromir must feel like he is on a pointless quest while the people of his nation die when he could be in Gondor doing something about it. These fears are not something he could share with anyone, least of all two carefree and happy Hobbits he feels he needs to protect from the horrors to come.

He probably feels a failure to protect them from such a thing after Gandalf ‘dies’ in Moria. Boromir is the first to acknowledge everyone’s sorrow and is reprimanded for it. Then despite him pointing out they never should have gone that way he is then taken to place where he has been cautioned about all of his life as dangerous. And really Lothlorien is the catalyst for all of it. I’m not fond of Galadriel and I think her interference is most likely to blame for the Ring’s influence over Boromir than anything else. All of her dramatic posturing and dire portents smacks of villain monologue to me. Then, with Aragorn’s lacklustre comforting over the fate of Gondor and later his harsh words on the riverbank, it was no surprise that Boromir was ripe for the Ring’s manipulations.

So now that you’ve read over a thousand words of me rambling on about why I think Boromir was done dirty, I’ll leave you in anticipation about next week’s entry. It’s basically ‘why I think Thorin is a jerk but should have lived’ and why Kili’s death was entirely unnecessary considering that any Tauriel and/or Legolas ‘romance’ never appeared to go anywhere. Also known as ‘For Valar’s sake, Thranduil, they are just friends…’

Anyway, I’m off to finish watching The Fellowship of the Ring again and write more ‘Everybody Lives Nobody Dies’ AUs. Plot bunnies abound, until next time y’all!

Writing Schedule, Editing and Original Works

As I’ve gotten older I’ve realised that I require structure. My brain chemistry dictates that I live a very chaotic life so any small measure of control I can exercise is very comforting. I’ve made myself a writing schedule if I stick to it is as much a mystery to me as anyone else. However, I’m on day twenty-three and I believe I’m doing relatively well. I’m hoping to keep myself engaged. The 007 Fest I recently was a part of showed me that I needed challenges, but not in the form of deadlines. I’m trying to set goals for myself that are not necessarily regular postings. If I manage to write around four hundred words a day or work on a project for at least an hour I feel pretty satisfied with my progress. I’ve made a tentative writing schedule if anyone wants to check it out. It is definitely subject to change and I’ve tried to promise myself that I will not contribute to my existing unfinished fics.

So part of that schedule is editing my older already posted works. One of the greatest challenges that I face is that I have no beta. I’ve been using the free version of Grammarly lately. It catches most of the errors considering that my English is a bit irregular. For the first thirteen years of my life, I went to an international school, so I use a lot of British spellings and expressions. When I moved back to the United States, I had to school myself to remember that Americans don’t spell or say things that way. I finally gave that up after a few years and just let people deal. So now my writing is an amalgamate of British expressions and weird Western American colloquialisms. Recently, I’ve found that if I plug my stories into Google translate and let it read it back to me I find all of the words I’ve missed or parts that just sound unwieldy.

As part of my editing, I am revisiting Fanfiction.net. I don’t care for it, but some of my audience is still there. I’m reuploading the explicit fics that I had censored during the 2012 purge. I haven’t made the decision yet as to whether I am going to take the chance to post them in their entirety or rewrite portions of them to pass the guidelines for M but not MA. I feel like rewriting them would be untrue to the intent in which I wrote them. I have, however, decided to upload the rest of my fics; for a while, I had left only my most popular ones on the site

Speaking of popularity, does anyone read original stuff any more? I’ve written a few original works, but I feel like there is no interest in original fiction anymore. I wonder if it is because I exist in an echo chamber of fanfiction or it is because of my own experience. I find lately that I struggle to read anything that is not fanfiction, even if it is the source material for my fandoms. I posted a couple of chapters of my NaNoWriMo 2012 novel Dark Dreams on AO3 and have since then come to realise that perhaps it is not the best platform for original work. I hesitate to describe it as a thriller anymore because of the dystopian overtones in the story. I totally lost interest in completing it after the 2016 election. Current events at that time, and since then, mirror the content far too much for me to be comfortable about the subject matter. However, I do have some poetry which I am still considering getting published as an ebook. I have several beautiful photographs I’ve taken over the years that I want to pair with each entry. Perhaps I can leverage some of this newfound motivation into getting that done.

Well, that is about it for this entry. Next time it’s all about fandoms, new and old. I’ll finish off with another plug for my SS Sam series and the link for the prompt list. Plot bunnies abound, until next time y’all!

Hyperfixations

So, current hyperfixations, this is a doozy. Sean Bean. I suppose this happened sometime in early June and hasn’t stopped since then. I watched Goldeneye again and was possessed to watch everything Sean Bean has been in. So, of course, I finally got around to watching the extended version of Lord of the Rings. Totally chickened out and shut it off right before the scene at Amon Hen where Boromir dies. Then I discovered The Frankenstein Chronicles on Netflix. What can I say? I still think he’s hot as an older man. It’s a very interesting take on the Frankenstein mythos. There are a good bit of historical events interwoven in the series which takes place around the mid-1830s. Bean’s character, John Marlott, is not a nice guy even though he is the protagonist. He’s not a bad guy either. The series is dark, there are some period typical religious overtones, and everyone is dirty and needs a bath or a good slap to the head.

I guess it was just luck that I stumbled upon the 007 Fest announcement shortly after that. Consequently, all of July was a barrage of James Bond material. Oddly enough, the titular character is not my favourite. I think I wrote some fantastic headcanons for Alec Trevelyan during this time. I finished a Goldeneye retcon fic that I was rather proud of called “Phantom Handler.” I also started another fic involving him and Mallory (the new M) called “Can’t Even Sit Straight.” I really wanted to do something different involving a romance between two older characters, one of whom is just discovering their sexuality. Also, purely because it’s interesting to me to do so, I’ve started constructing a timeline to insert Alec Trevelyan’s history into the current events of the Craig Bond’s series of movies.

As for other things Sean Bean has been in, I still need to watch Legends, because I’m a sucker for crime/thriller series. I have been told Broken is pretty good, it would be something different for me since I’m not too much of a slice of life drama fan. I’ve just recently seen gifsets going around on tumblr for World on Fire, it looks intriguing. Depending on how dedicated I am, I might rewatch both Silent Hill movies and finally get around to watching the Island. If I really want to go all out I might possibly search out some of his older works like Caravaggio, Anna Karenina, and Lady Chatterley. I am not going to rewatch the Sharpe miniseries only because I would never get any writing done at that point, but I will highly recommend it to anyone who likes period pieces. However, since I did watch Lord of the Rings again (and finally finished it), the current fic I’m trying to complete is “The Destiny of a King.” I am retconning Boromir’s death because of total self-indulgence. I love giving my favourite characters happy endings and it’s a wonderful opportunity to add to my Sam Winchester soulmate series.

This brings me to my ongoing hyperfixation. Sam Winchester. Y’all are probably going to get tired of me going on about Sam. Sundays on my tumblr are all posts and meta about Sam Winchester. I have an entire series of fics dedicated to the tag Sam Winchester Deserves Happiness. My Adventures of the Sailing Ship Sam Series is where I can indulge my fandom bicycle crossover multi shipper fascination to my heart’s content. Please check out my prompt list on this series if you are interested in future fics. So why I am so keen on it? Sam has many unexplored storylines, his character development is emotionally rich but outside of that it’s still vague enough to build on, also the writers of Supernatural have written him slightly enough out of the main character role that he can be taken anywhere. Really, that is where it gets interesting. There are so many opportunities in Sam’s storyline that he can break from his current life and go elsewhere. With my tendency to want to fix canon, Sam Winchester is one of the perfect characters to write with.

Well, enough of that for now, tons of meta has been written and that is not for this post. Check out this tag here on my tumblr if you want to read random things I post about my fics. Next time, I hope to talk about some of my old works and the current editing I’ve been doing on them. Also, I might get into some of my original writing and talk a little about a controversial subject that I’ve been seeing floating around tumblr recently. Plot bunnies abound, until next time y’all!

New Approach and Intro

So I have decided to dump all of my fandom ramblings here. I am hoping to update once a week on what I've been doing. I've been in fandom quite a while, for over thirty years at least, and I think I am just now getting my act together when it comes to what I want out of the experience. I recently participated in a fandom festival and it brought into focus what I really enjoy about fandom. I love writing and creating things, not only for others to consume but also for my own enjoyment. So in the spirit of trying to get this writing thing off to a good start, I thought I would regale everyone with my start in fandom.

A lot of my earliest fandoms were anime and manga, but I think my writing really took off with some of the television shows in the late 90s to the early 2000s. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Files and Stargate SG1 were all shows that I enjoyed. I know that at the height of its popularity I had attended an X-Files convention and that was one of my first exposures to fan culture outside of my group of friends gathering for Friday night viewings. I think one of the first fandoms I ever wrote for was actually Firefly. Until then, I was mostly unaware of online forums and did not even know Livejournal existed. I wrote simply for my own satisfaction.

Somewhere around 2004, I went to an anime convention in Los Angeles and a wonderful group of fans introduced me to Fanfiction.net. At this point, I was writing quite a bit but did not feel confident about posting anything. It wasn't until I discovered Criminal Minds that I seriously considered putting my writing out there. Somewhere around 2008, I posted my first story on Fanfiction.net, and for the next four years, I pretty much posted into the void.

I'm not a social person, so most of my fan experience comes from online. Somewhere around 2010, I discovered tumblr and my exposure to ship wars and fandom meta began. At this point in my life, my depression and work demands were making me escape into the internet more and more. I binged my first six seasons of Supernatural and that was the when my writing took off in earnest. Then the purge of adult content happened on Fanfiction.net in 2012 and more than half of my writing was wiped. I briefly moved everything over to Adultfanfiction.net but I continued posting at Fanfiction.net with censored stories.

November of 2012 rolled around and I finished my first NaNoWriMo since I joined in 2009. I was ecstatic. It also introduced me to Archive of Our Own (AO3). I pretty much abandoned the other sites for AO3. I continued posting fanfiction blissfully ignoring fandom nonsense until about 2015. About this time tumblr nerfed my original url due to adult content. I was mildly unhappy but created the one I am currently at. Somewhere around then, I stopped writing altogether for about four years due to real-life issues. I abandoned posting on tumblr around two years later because it wasn't fun anymore.

So my latest re-entry into fandom was because of Good Omens. I had read the book when it was first released and I was delighted that they made it into a miniseries. Suddenly my interest was piqued again and I started catching up on my favourite shows like Supernatural. I became a bitter Sam girl overnight. I dove back into tumblr looking for fanart and wanting to reconnect with old fandoms. This is what lead me to my current situation. I began a massive crossover series and started to re-visit some of my older favourites in relation to that. In the process, I stumbled over the 007 Fest and my writing took off again.

Hopefully, this anecdote hasn't been too tedious. So for the next post, I was thinking of discussing my tentative writing schedule and current hyperfixations. The most recent indicator is always what I'm posting on tumblr. Plot bunnies abound, until next time y'all!