I Did A Thing During Quarantine!!!

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes.

DC (Batman)

buy the ticket, take the ride by Anonymous

Tim had always figured that if he ever woke up in Vegas sans-memory, it would be when he was older than fourteen. But there were some things he couldn’t control, and apparently whatever had happened last night that he didn’t remember was one of them.

Instead of All the Colors That I Saw by SilverSkiesAtMidnight

Dick comes around to stand fully in front of him, keeping a steadying hand on Tim’s arm. “Just because you know you’re safe intellectually doesn’t mean you always feel safe,” he says softly. “It’s okay if you don’t feel safe.”

“But it’s not okay!” Tim bursts out. “Because if I don’t feel safe, then how is Jason supposed to feel safe? He shouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable just because my brain is screwed up!”

There’s a faint sound by the door, barely more than an intake of breath, and his eyes snap to the no-longer empty doorway.

Day 28 - IT’S NOT JUST IN YOUR HEAD “Good. You’re finally awake.” | nightmares | panic

Star Wars

Present by WhatisWithin

Luke sometimes forgot how scary Daddy was to other people.

It was a weird problem to have. And a stupid one too. He should remember that kind of stuff. Everyone was scared of Daddy.

(After being rescued by his father from the streets of Mos Espa, ten year old Luke adjusts to life on a Star Destroyer.)

Clone Wars

walk by faith/tell no one what you've seen by Killbothtwins

Part 1 of the massive machinery of hope

After the end of the war with the Empire, Obi-Wan wakes up in his twelve-year old body. Now all he needs to do is convince everyone he's psychic, trick his Master into taking him on before he's sent to Bandomeer, redeem a few bad guys, and try not to have a nervous breakdown. Pretty easy. It's not like the Sith are lurking on the horizon, waiting to devour the Jedi Order.

Sticker Burrs by RileeTheRiddler

Obi-Wan gets thrown back into his baby body at the exact moment his birth mother tries to drown him in a rushing river.

Instead of a Jedi, a Mandalorian fishes him out.

General Jocasta by BairnSidhe

Picture, if you will, a shiny new High General Obi-Wan who has just been given control of the GAR on the logic he's the only Jedi with war experience. Except he's never actually organized an army before, and he needs help.

Enter Co-High General Jocasta Nu, who runs the GAR like she would the Archive. Everything organized and cataloged, her precious Collection now expanded to include the entire GAR.

And well, she's a librarian....

The Sith never stood a chance.

Of Tookas and Interdimensional Wormholes by FictionalDragonMother

This is a silly fic about fluffy kitties and their war-torn counterparts who expose a great evil and somehow manage to save the Galaxy along the way. Okay, actual description time:

When the Force decides that things are starting to go down the wrong path, the mystical presence decides to shake things up. And what's the best way to flip the script? Bring in cats. Lots of cats. Cats on the Resolute, cats on the Marauder, cats running around the Jedi Temple and sitting in the seats of Jedi Council members. Is that a completely hairless cat on Chancellor Palpatine's lap? Gross. The rest of them are pretty cute though.

Watch out Dracula he’s got… Academic Credentials

Thoughts on Yavanna and the portrayal of nature in Arda

And in that time of dark Yavanna also was unwilling utterly to forsake the Outer Lands; for all things that grow are dear to her, and she mourned for the works that she had begun in Middle-earth but Melkor had marred. Therefore leaving the house of Aulë and the flowering meads of Valinor she would come at times and heal the hurts of Melkor; and returning she would ever urge the Valar to that war with his evil dominion that they must surely wage ere the coming of the Firstborn.

And:

It came to pass that the Valar held council, for they became troubled by the tidings that Yavanna and Oromë brought from the Outer Lands; and Yavanna spoke before the Valar, saying: ‘Ye mighty of Arda, the Vision of Ilúvatar was brief and soon taken away, so that maybe we cannot guess within a narrow count of days the hour appointed. Yet be sure of this: the hour approaches, and within this age our hope shall be revealed, and the Children shall awake. Shall we then leave the lands of their dwelling desolate and full of evil? Shall they walk in darkness while we have light? Shall they call Melkor lord while Manwë sits upon Taniquetil?’

Yavanna is differentiated from most of the other Valar in her desire to go to the Outer Lands, and she is alike to Oromë and Ulmo in this, but they are clearly in the minority. She is also in favor of directly opposing Melkor through war, and in that scene where she advocates for it, she and Tulkas are the only ones. Of course, some among the Valar find ways to help other than fighting—after the council, Varda goes out to hang more stars in the sky so that the Children of Ilúvatar do not awaken in darkness—and later the Valar do wage war against Melkor and imprison him. But Yavanna was in favor of fighting and getting involved much sooner. 

It seems a defining characteristic of Yavanna is that she not only loves Middle-earth and its inhabitants, as all the Valar do—she also feels compelled to be involved, to act, to fight. Of course, during the First Age she remained in Valinor with the other Valar. But she is far more in favor of being involved in the world: she went to Middle-earth when most of them did not, and she advocated for intervention in Middle-earth before most of them were ready to do so. Tolkien characterizes her this way consistently. 

I love this, because nature is often thought of as passive, and Yavanna is anything but. As the Valië who created green and growing things, she is probably the closest thing in Tolkien’s writing to a personification of the natural world, and so her desire to play an active role in Middle-earth—and to fight to protect it—says something about how Tolkien viewed nature.

Many people think of nature as a passive thing, separate from humans, which we can own and use however we want. In this understanding of the world, nature does not feel; nature does not act. While some people acknowledge that animals have thoughts and feelings, few people think plants have them. But in Tolkien’s world, trees do think, and feel, and remember—and they also literally fight back against those who hurt them. And the Ents and all of the trees of course come from Yavanna’s thought. Yavanna first thinks of Ents because of her desire to protect trees:

‘Long in the growing, swift shall they be in the felling, and unless they pay toll with fruit upon bough little mourned in their passing. So I see in my thought. Would that the trees might speak on behalf of all things that have roots, and punish those that wrong them!’

And Yavanna says to Manwë that this thought was in the Ainulindalë itself: 

‘For while thou wert in the heavens and with Ulmo built the clouds and poured out the rains, I lifted up the branches of great trees to receive them, and some sang to Ilúvatar amid the wind and the rain.’ 

The trees sang to Ilúvatar!!! The trees sang to Ilúvatar!!! I love that so much. Does this mean that some trees participated in the Ainulindalë as it was unfolding? Or was this merely a vision of Arda in the future? Either way, through this passage and others, Tolkien completely rejects the idea that nature is passive or inanimate, and I love that.

The other thing that stands out to me about Yavanna is her anger. She wishes that trees might ‘punish’ those that wrong them, and says of the Ents, ‘there shall walk a power in the forests whose wrath they [anyone who cuts down trees] will arouse at their peril.’ I love this, and it rings true to me that nature is something whose wrath we arouse at our peril… It’s not that you’re going to be attacked by Ents if you cut down a forest unsustainably (although maybe you should be), but destroying nature arouses its ‘wrath’ in the sense that it throws things out of balance, and creates more problems that end up hurting us, too, because we’re also part of nature.

It also occurred to me that Yavanna is quite different from the concept of mother nature found in a lot of myths, even though mother nature or mother earth would seem like logical archetypes to compare her to. There are some similarities, of course: she is associated with growing things and with plenty. But I feel like mother nature is usually associated with nurturing, gentleness and pacifism, and Yavanna is not a pacifist. And it isn’t that she can never be nurturing—it does say she would ‘heal the hurts of Melkor’ in Middle-earth—but she also wants trees to ‘punish’ those that harm them, and warns of the ‘wrath’ of the forests, and urges the Valar to go to war themselves. And I love that. I hear the echo of her fierce protectiveness in the Ents’ marching song:

We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door; For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars—we go to war! To land of gloom with tramp of doom, with roll of drum, we come, we come; To Isengard with doom we come! With doom we come, with doom we come!

@feanorianweek day ii; maglor the minstrel

And when this new star was seen at evening, Maedhros spoke to Maglor his brother, and he said: ‘Surely that is a Silmaril that shines now in the West?’ And Maglor answered: ‘If it be truly the Silmaril which we saw cast into the sea that rises again by the power of the Valar, then let us be glad for its glory is seen now by many, and is yet secure from all evil.’ Then the Elves looked up, and despaired no longer.

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, “Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath”

[ ID: A 12-picture edit for Maglor from the Tolkien legendarium. The prevalent colours are a green-ish gold and purple. Here’s what the images show:

black text on white background, reading “sole survivor”

The model Noh Seoung Hwa, an east asian man, facing front. He’s wearing a blazer and multiple rings

a detail from a baroque painting, showing a bushy sleeve with gold decor

white text on purple background reading “kanafinwe makalaure” and “maglor”

a bay by night with a reddish moon above

a yellow gem

a golden baroque-style harp

cut-open fig fruits

white text on purple background reading “greatest minstrel of the noldor”

golden glitter on the clavicle of a light-skinned person

Noh Seoung Hwa wearing a crown. His face is only visible from the eyes upwards

A crowd of people with swords shrouded in purple mist

End ID ]

You know which bit of The Fall of Gondolin made me go really, truly feral? After Tuor and Voronwë see Túrin, without knowing who it is (my heart), we get this:

The cries of the hunters grew fainter; for the Orcs thrust never deep into the wild lands at either hand, but swept rather down and up the road. They recked little of stray fugitives, but spies they feared and the scouts of armed foes; for Morgoth had set a guard on the highway, not to ensnare Tuor and Voronwë (of whom as yet he knew nothing) nor any coming from the West, but to watch for the Blacksword, lest he should escape and pursue the captives of Nargothrond, bringing help, it might be, out of Doriath.

Part of the reason that they manage to cross the Vale of Sirion (apart from the cloak of Ulmo) is that Morgoth is so concerned with keeping a watch out for Túrin that his scouts keep to the road, and aren’t bothered about pursuing two “stray fugitives” come out of the west into the wilds beyond. He is so preoccupied with Túrin that Tuor slips right through his fingers.

Without ever knowing it, Túrin helps Tuor to reach Gondolin, to deliver Ulmo’s message, to marry Idril and father Eärendil, putting in motion Morgoth’s own downfall. Cursed as he is, he is still able to play his own part in bringing that about, and all without ever knowing it. And that gets me right in the heart.

2020 is the túrin turambar of years

I need authors to write a oneshot of their characters so I know what I'm getting into before I commit to a whole book about these people

look: our neanderthal ancestors took care of the sick and disabled so if ur post-apocalyptic scenario is an excuse for eugenics, u are a bad person and literally have less compassion than a caveman