Tumblr crosspost (5 January 2021)

An anon said (wrt this):

The Eowyn/Faramir shipper in me wants to suggest that Faramir keeps his horse but shows up at the same time as Boromir because he lingers at Meduseld, fascinated by Eowyn, but I feel like Faramir is too dutiful for that lol I do love the potential this AU has for that relationship - as much as I love the Houses of Healing, it would be interesting to see how they would bond when not immediately recovering from trauma...

I replied:

Haha, I was just writing up an addition that’s like … okay, how do Faramir and Éowyn interact? They’d meet when he first passed through—does he fall as rapidly as in canon? What does Éowyn think of him? What does he pick up from Wormtongue? If he does still fall like a ton of bricks for her, that’d be a hell of a situation to leave behind. I mean, it is anyway, but there are just so many questions that arise from that.

I tend to agree that he wouldn’t linger; he’d give a warning, but he’s got divine commands to follow. Still, I think it could definitely affect how their relationship winds out. It’d be more protracted in some ways, and there’s a big question of whether she still gets infatuated with Aragorn with Faramir there. If Faramir and Éowyn do fall in love in the TTT timeline, her pain would be different but perhaps all the more present when it’s real love at work.

Alternately, it’s possible that Faramir is initially overshadowed by Aragorn, and he doesn’t end up in the Houses of Healing because he’s on the Paths of the Dead, and following that arc to get back to Gondor. Then he would be off to Mordor (maybe that’s when she realizes her true feelings), or maybe she realizes after the victory when she’s supposed to return to Rohan … there are a lot of ways it could play out.

Tumblr crosspost (5 January 2021)

colorwheels14 responded to this post:

My style is probably not what you’re looking for, and I see this is really about you wanting to be able to draw. But I’ve been coming back to painting now that I’ve got a tablet and had time to play with digital art. Do you have something you want me to try? I start teaching again next week, so I certainly couldn’t give you any timeline or even say it would happen in a timely manner.

I replied:

Oh wow, thanks! There are so many things rolling around my head that I’ll have to think for a bit, but that is super nice, whatever the timeline.

[Later addition on Jan 11th:]

It's probably pretty predictable, but my suggestion/request would be Faramir in Byzantine!Gondor dress (but with the canon long black hair!)

colorwheels14 replied on the same day:

Excellent! I'll let you know when I get something done that I'm happy with. :D

I responded:

Thank you very, very much!

colorwheels14 replied:

You're welcome, I've been thinking, and I have ideas! But I also have a question-- do you associate any colors with Gondor/Faramir? It's been a while since I read the books and need to do it again. Also, warning: I teach art history (esp. medieval!), so Byzantine for me brings to mind lots of mosaics, icons, and textiles. ;)

[The rest of the conversation took place over PMs and email.]

A fandom retrospective (1/3)

I talked a few days ago, under f-lock, about some painful RL experiences around being perceived as deeply boring and incapable of feeling pain (or feeling most emotions, really). And I wanted to make an addendum to that, one that I don’t think really needs the f-lock.

I’ve made many complaints about various fandoms + multifandom spaces and trends over the years, and I still consider most of those complaints valid. Nevertheless, fandom has typically been a much less bleak environment for me.

If someone in fandom finds me boring, they usually do not tell me so, or treat me in a way that makes this apparent. They simply don’t interact with me. And people who do follow me or interact with me don’t do it because of my family’s involvement, or because I’m a package deal with more interesting/attractive/charismatic friends, or because of some other figure in my meatspace life at all. In fandom, none of that matters. At least, it hasn't for me.

Even the followers who don’t particularly care about me as a person are following me for my own sake in some capacity, rather than for the sake of someone else. Sure, some of these will leave if I get super into something they find dull, or stop posting or whatnot, but their interest in my opinions about the thing they’re into is still about my opinions of that thing, or how I express my opinions, or something about my online persona.

And there are also people who don’t share my preoccupation with a current fixation, or don’t find my take on it interesting, and are thus kind of bored, but they like me personally enough to stick around, anyway. This doesn’t usually trigger my “oh no I’m being boring” issues, because if they’re invested enough to stay, despite disinterest in my current thing, they’re evidently still engaged at some level with me.

Beyond that, people in fandom don’t typically lecture me on my general demeanor. It’s happened, but not often. In fact, while fellow fans sometimes express respect for my—let’s say, often rather severe manner of presenting myself and my opinions, they don’t generally act like it is required of me to be that way or that it somehow precludes a capacity to feel. We’re all in fandom because we feel things!

And that’s been very powerful for me. I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until I was well into my 20s, while I’ve been directly or indirectly excluded or distanced from many RL social circles ever since I was a child. I’ve certainly been treated as if I and the things I care about are objectively dull and emotionally unengaging.

But throughout my entire adult life, there has always been one glaring exception to this. There really was a social sphere in which my experience of others and of myself could be different. There was fandom.

For all of online fandom’s many, many flaws, this has been part of my experience of it from even before I was an adult—in fact, from the time that I made my first post. At the time, I was extremely shy and anxious, so I lurked a lot, and was very worried about breaking some rule somewhere if I actually said anything on the big scary Internet. But I had feelings. I was in high school and I had such feelings.

Many of these were Pride and Prejudice feelings. In high school, I started collecting copies of P&P just so I could read the introductions/editorial content and see what other people thought about it, since nobody I knew IRL cared about it the way I did. This was both my first step into academia proper and a sort of proto-fannish activity. But my Austen feelings were not actually the ones that propelled me into breaking my self-imposed Internet silence and detachment from online communities. A lot of Austen fandom didn’t really seem like my people. I was also into Harry Potter, but HP fandom similarly did not seem like my people.

Actually, speaking of boring other people, I’m going to be really self-indulgent and rewind even further for THE FULL SAGA of what brought me into fandom.

( Read more... )

Tumblr crosspost (5 January 2021)

Still thinking about the Faramir AU, and:

I think the Moria section would wind out in basically the same way, though Gandalf’s death would hit Faramir harder than Boromir.

Faramir canonically has reservations about Lothlórien and Galadriel, so how does that go down? Especially the mental examination bit, which I think would be quite odd for him as someone who is more accustomed to being the person who sees part of what’s going on in the hearts and thoughts of others, and less often the person who is seen. (Though he would certainly have some experience of the latter w/ Denethor.)

What about, you know, the Ring? IIRC it gets stronger the closer it gets to Mount Doom, so the temptation he faced in canon would actually be considerably stronger than what he faces here, but a one-time experience where this is an ongoing, grinding thing. I’ve seen it suggested that he’d still be the weakest link, but I think he could resist it as much as any of the non-hobbits, but that’s still only so far, and his canon response in TTT suggests that he’d understand that.

What ultimately separates the Fellowship? Faramir wouldn’t be going off to take the Ring, so that whole set piece would work differently. I don’t think there’s reason to assume he’d die; him going would make very little overall difference in that case, except to possibly make things worse, and part of the point of him being meant to go is that it would make a significant difference, for the better. I think my idea in the original Faramir-goes-to-Rivendell fic I wrote as a teenager was that he perceives more clearly than the others that the Fellowship can’t hold out indefinitely, and privately tells Frodo so. Frodo then decides to go alone. These days … hmm.

Does Faramir join the hunt for Merry and Pippin, assuming that that pretty much follows canon? He’d want to get back to Gondor, but I think he’d always do what he considers the ethical thing, so it’s not hard to imagine him joining them. He’s also a Ranger and very tall; I don’t think he’d hold them back speed-wise. So that would go pretty similarly.

And then, Rohan!