Words in the Heroes' Tongue

Or should that be "Drow me like one of your French girls"?

WriterConUK is next weekend; I’m looking forward to it enormously. There is – just barely – enough time for people who haven’t yet signed up to do so… see the sign-up post...

I’ve been devoting myself to writing Lord of the Rings crossover fic recently, probably because of the corrupting effect of living with, and beta-ing for, curiouswombat. The story on which I’m concentrating at the moment won’t be appearing on LiveJournal because, for some reason, it’s coming out with enormous chapters. Chapter One (which I wrote in only two nights!) is 13,400 words and Chapters Three and Four are even longer – way, way, over the LiveJournal character limit for posts. I believe that Dreamwidth has a bigger limit, and I might see if I can put it up here one day, but not yet.

The story, ‘The Dark Companion’, is based on the idea that the Quest of the Ring was successful only because of a long chain of coincidences, and lucky chances, and that any change is likely to make things worse in the long term even if it brings a short-term gain. Adding a Tenth Walker is unlikely to work out well no matter what abilities he or she can bring to the Fellowship.

In my tale I added Cierre, the Drow Ranger from the Forgotten Realms, who has featured in a couple of my other stories already. She arrives through a portal at Amon Hen just as the Fellowship breaks up, is just too late to save Boromir’s life, and joins with Aragorn for the pursuit of the Hobbit-abducting Orcs. She’s a lethal fighter, a skilled tracker, and a tireless and extremely fast runner; an ideal addition, in theory, but that isn’t how it works out. Black skin in Middle Earth tends to be the mark of the Enemy and she inspires mistrust in everyone they meet; she has her own enemies pursuing her; and a casual remark by Cierre, made in good faith, sets off a chain of events which could destroy everything.

I’m having more fun writing it than I have had in any other story outside the Tabula Avatar ‘verse. For the moment I’m posting it only at the Pit of Voles and at Faerie, the LotR fic archive that was set up as a refuge for people escaping from the wreckage of Lotrfanfiction.com. However I’ve also been producing banners for it and I’m posting them here (behind a cut, of course) as a preview. ellynn_ithilwen produced a couple of images for me to represent Cierre, using as her base pictures of Chinese actress Bingbing Li in her role as Ni Chang, The Bride With White Hair, in the Jackie Chan/Jet Li movie ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’. I’ve built several of the banners, and my current default icon, around those manips. She also produced for me a manip of Éowyn in a somewhat unusual guise…

( Banners for ‘The Dark Companion’ )

If someone skilled at photo-manipulation has time on their hands and is feeling generous I would love someone to do me a manip (reasonably large) of Éowyn disguised as a Drow. Probably using the iconic picture of Éowyn practising with a sword with one hand on the flat of the blade. The idea is that she's used charcoal or soot on her skin and chalk-dust in her hair as the basis of the disguise; she's just going for effect at a distance, not trying to be good enough to pass close inspection. Ideally she would be wearing wrist-bracers but I could add those myself; I'm pretty good at super-imposing images but I can't for the life of me change skin colour on a picture.

Bloody Peter Jackson. Why did he write the Haradrim cavalry out of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields? I’m trying to find decent screencaps I can use in a crude and amateurish banner for Les Morts Dansant (the Éomer/Lothíriel LotR/Forgotten Realms crossover I started posting yesterday) but I’m struggling to find anything suitable.

Anyone seen any pics of Saracen-style cavalry online? And a beautiful young woman in medieval princess costume who could do as Lothíriel? And any women who could pass as Drow with their skins turned deep brown and their hair turned black? I’ve found a few Ethiopian and Somali supermodels but most of the pics show ears which definitely aren’t pointy. And the clothes aren’t at all appropriate. I’m considering trying to dye Keira Knightley, in King Arthur, dark brown…

On a different tack: while doing research for Les Morts Dansant, and for my Conan crossover The Witch’s Promise, it’s struck me how strange the world must have seemed before the discovery of Plate Tectonics. The way Tolkien and R. E. Howard perceived the world must have been very strange and frightening. Continents seemed, to them, to rise and fall with no rhyme or reason. Mountain ranges appeared at random. I believe most people regard Plate Tectonics as important only because of its relevance to earthquake prediction but it’s so much more than that. It makes the world make sense.

All hail Alfred Wegener and those who built upon his work!

Belated happy birthdays to jamalov29, sp23, and treiza. On time happy birthdays to kantayra and jadeleopard

I fell down on the way to work on Thursday night. I’d hurt my ankle the day before and as I was walking briskly – not running, I was in plenty of time – for the bus that ankle gave way under me. I went down like a felled tree. I skinned the palms of my hands and one knee, bruised the knee as well, and ruined the knee of the trousers that I was wearing. My favourites, even though I hate the colour; they’re the only really comfortable ones that I own. I think they’re beyond repair.

Perhaps because of the fall I’ve felt somewhat out of sorts during these days off. My intended completion of ‘Life, Resumed’ hasn’t been accomplished although I still have one night to go and it is just possible that I’ll get it done. I’ve been writing away but what I’ve produced just doesn’t seem good enough. In fact I’ve felt rather down about my writing altogether. I haven’t really been able to summon up the enthusiasm.

But now I’ve just seen something that has fired me up again. mythichistorian has created some delightful artwork for Tabula Avatar and it’s brought the smile back to my face. Find it HERE.

The artwork for "The Cloak of Mist" from the watchersdiaries artathon is up here. Done by the stupendously talented deathisyourart, who is not only a wonderful artist but was also one of the founders of the watchersdiaries community and so was responsible for inspiring me to write the story in the first place.

I've got the wallpaper on my desktop, the banner on several different places on the website, and I've made an attempt to put the banner on my Journal. Not entirely successfully, but it is visible to some extent and is clearly visible on the Calendar page. At the bottom, alas, I can't get it to be visible at the top. And, of course, I'm using the new icon.

ETA: opalescence_ had a similar problem, appealed for help, and someone provided a link to a tutorial. I made use of it and the banner is now properly displayed.

Also,

Happy Birthday to janedavitt and belated happy birthday to sambony

I don't usually miss birthdays but I've hardly checked LJ at all during the past week.

I've also just heard that Savage Beauty has been nominated for Best WIP, Comedy/Fluff, Romance, and Fantasy at the ninth round of the Love’s Last Glimpse Awards.

And at Round 2 of the Love's Bitch Awards (I hadn't previously even heard of those) Savage Beauty has been nominated for Best Comedy and Best Alternate Universe, and Noggin and the Vampire has been nominated for Best Crossover.

What's the betting that I come second as usual?