Since I’ve received a few concerned messages in the past week or two: I’m still here, I’m fine. :)

The urge to post or reblog content, however, is quite honestly at a low. There was a time when I guilt-tripped myself into doing so, but nah — this shouldn’t feel like a chore.

But I’m not going anywhere — I’m just keeping to reading, commenting, and collecting favorites at the moment (and the inbox ofc is always open)

BKNECHT

So, EA has finally decided to give something back to their customers after the shitstorm that has been their game releases. This link is direct from the EA website so it’s not illegal and whatnot. Enjoy :D (requires Origin Account)

Francois Arnaud for Interview Magazine (via iraplastic)

The Strange Familiar - Redemption

shelter me from the cold starless night 

shelter me from the ghosts of my mind 

I feel alive when I am in your arms 

you set me free, shelter me

on why I feel like "Elisabeth" highlights everything that's wrong with "Evita"

tw for mentions of suicide and implied pedophilia

Elisabeth is really, really plainly borrowing the framework of Evita. There’s not really any contesting that.

They’re both rock opera/classical musical hybrids about the politically active, iconically stylish, body-image-obsessed wife of a man in power, whose life is presented in past tense through the narration of an antagonistic male revolutionary figure who assumes a number of other small roles throughout the story and only directly interacts with the heroine once in the course of the show. The heroine in each of them has a major power ballad anthem, the second acts of both shows begin with her at the moment of her greatest personal triumph, only to be reminded by the narrator that this is as good as she’s ever going to have it so she’d better not get too comfy, she faces massive resistance from the society she marries into, she’s first shown as a 14-year-old girl already profoundly influenced by a neglectful father (though Elisabeth, unlike Eva, doesn’t realize the extent of her father’s neglect of her needs until years later). Both shows were written largely to confront the popular image of their subjects. I mean, there’s even the rhythmic chanting of each of their names in the prologue by the ensemble. Whoever on TV Tropes said “Elisabeth is virtually Evita on an epic scale” had it almost totally right.

But there is a major difference between them that bleeds down through the fabric of both shows, and that is that Evita is an incredibly misogynistic show on a textual, built-in level. Elisabeth is flawed in that it’s a woman’s story told entirely through a man’s framing (actually, two men’s, Lucheni’s and Death’s) and doesn’t really have any female characters of import beyond Elisabeth herself and Dowager Empress Sophie (and, um, there’s the extraordinarily ableist asylum scene), but it’s not inherently hateful toward women in general the way Evita is. 

Read More

Coming very late but hopefully not too late, the result of a collab between the amazing alackofghosts and yours truly, featuring artwork of Morwen and Aerin after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and a ficlet to go with the scene. 

——————-

When the news of the lost battle came, it was a blistering summer day, and the fields of Dor-lómin bent summer-yellow and withered beneath the onslaught of the sun. Annael of the Swan Wing was the message bearer, returning by the grace of an ill chance that had spared him alone.

There would be none other coming, the elf said, standing alone in the center of the assembly place, squinting at the sun and rubbing his arms, shivering despite the heat of the day. None friendly.

The crowd dispersed, and Aerin, too, hurried homeward to break the news. It only struck her looking into her mother’s face that her father was among those who would not be returning from the battle.

Almost in defiance of the fact she pulled clothes from her wardrobe that he’d always liked, an embroidered shawl and headscarf and a long-sleeved dress she’d last worn for the winter festival, where they had evoked the promise of a hopeful spring. The thick green cloth did not do much to keep the numbness at bay.

* * *

She hadn’t thought about Morwen until a day or so after, but when she did, her feet couldn’t carry hr fast enough. Húrin’s house – Morwen’s house now, she reminded herself - was dark and shuttered, the door to the garth locked, but she could hear movement beyond the enclosure, the clang of a bucket being drawn from the well, that made her call out on impulse. One of Morwen’s servants opened, skittering nervous eyes over her form. “Oh, it’s you,” she said and made room to let Aerin in. “The lady doesn’t want to see anyone, she’s not to be touched, or disturbed, or talked to, or anything at all.”

"Thank you," Aerin dimly heard herself say. She tugged her clothing into place, rumpled as it was from sleeping in, and swallowed around the lump in her throat. "I’ll see to her, if she’ll have me."

She found Morwen in Urwen’s chamber. It had been abandoned after the girl’s death, and if not for the candle flame shuddering like a halo around Morwen’s dark head from a corner of the room, Aerin might have missed her entirely. As it was her heart skipped to see Morwen sitting on the nursery chair like a wooden doll, with her fingers clenched, one hand around the seat of the chair, the other twisted into the fabric of her dress above her knee.

"Morwen," Aerin said softly, and the words faltered when no reply came. She would have laughed if not for her throat closing up at the thought that came to her then, asking, how are you, and the reply.Morwen was not a jocular woman, but she enjoyed banter sometimes, a little more acerbic than friendly, but always enough to send Aerin’s heart skipping when her eyes lit on the tall, straight figure and the light from her eyes hinting at a sort of laughter. She’d say, oh, all is well. My husband hasn’t returned from war and Húrin thought that if the war went ill, we’d be in for a fate yet worse than dying on the battlefield.

Aerin did not ask, and Morwen said no such thing, said nothing at all, just sat. Mindful of the servant’s warnings, Aerin didn’t attempt to touch her, but pulled over a chair of her own and sat without brushing the thick dust from it. There weren’t any words of comfort to be had, but it seemed at last that Morwen took notice of her if she had not done so before, for her fingers began to curl and uncurl in the fabric of her dress, and from the other hand there was the scrabble of fingernails over wood.

Aerin reached out, pulling that hand away, and Morwen flinched. No wonder – it was hard to make out in the dim light, but her fingertips were bruised, the skin hot and surely painful. Aerin folded her own hand, smaller and cooler, over it, hoping it might bring Morwen some relief.

They continued sitting, un-speaking, after that, until Morwen at last seemed to sag ever so slightly, toward her. Worn-out though she might be, the gesture was enough to set Aerin’s heart racing – for married as Morwen was – widowed as she was, or even had she not been, that was one of the few things Aerin could hope to gain from her to cherish, for Morwen had been called strange in her choices – not given to love, by some, but that was ignorance – not given to love as others did, perhaps. 

Were it otherwise, she’d not be sitting here in the dark, nor would they be sitting in the dark together. Nor would Morwen at last let her head droop toward Aerin, or poise her shoulders between the need to be touched and not, when Aerin took it for permission to slide an arm around her, to rest her lips on Morwen’s forehead, nose against her hairline.

It wasn’t the time for speech yet, for Morwen only sighed and fell quiet again, but they had one another, and whatever else came – as long as they had this, and had the darkened room to sit in, all mustn’t fail or falter.

#GazaUnderAttack

This is the strongest and saddest thing I’ve read in a long time. 

LES. MIS. DALLAS.

The Alcázar of Seville to be used as the Water Gardens of Dorne in Game of Thrones season 5.

so i guess some of you may remember those amazing paintings from frozen)) As a part of visual development for my animated Elisabeth i was obliged to re-imagine in the same way her iconic portrait (bonus: gross love-sick Death^^)

JFC Tumblr, NO, most women in the 16th century, when Shakespeare wrote, were NOT married off my age 14. It was UNUSUAL below the aristocracy (and those marriages were often not consummated until the bride was older) and that’s why Shakespeare makes a big deal about Juliet’s age, and about her mother’s. THEY ARE UNUSUALLY YOUNG.

Average marriage age for women across the board was early 20s, iirc, late 20s for men, late 20s for women and late 20s-early 30s for men, and our ancestors were not fucking stupid: they knew childbirth was dangerous (the number one cause of female mortality!) and that a 21-year-old was more likely to survive it than a 14-year-old. They also knew a man in his late 20s was more likely to be established and able to support a family, although that’s more relevant to the lower and middle classes. Did people get married younger? Of course! But on average, people were not getting married in their teens.

Think whatever you bloody well like about the “true meaning of R&J,” but the main characters—BOTH OF THEM—are unusually young for marriage, and Shakespeare damn well did it on purpose, and lampshaded it with Lady Capulet’s own unpreparedness for parenting, which she tries to tell herself is normal because it’s her own experience. (Would things have gone differently if R&J were older? IDK, maybe they’d have come up with a better escape plan, but since Laurence, a supposed adult, comes up with a pretty lousy one, who knows. Not my point.)

Seriously, there are hard stats to back up average marriage ages, and in very few agricultural or industrial societies has it ever been the teen years, for reasons of both biology and economics.

"Women in the past all got married at 14" is starting to rival the amazing gay paradise (women conveniently erased) of ancient Greece and Rome for historical bugbears in fandom that I want to fucking set on fire…

Flowers and Birds, 1822, Niu Yun

ink and color on silk, pair of hanging scrolls