mithen

Title: How to Suffer Beautifully
Relationship: Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Dick Grayson, Waylon Jones, Harvey Dent,
Continuity: Heroes of the Squared Circle, a DC/pro wrestling fusion (click for notes and all chapters).
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13
Word Count 2900
Summary: Clark and Bruce strike a deal, two more wrestlers advance, and Bruce begins training his first class.

( Are you listening, Little Knight? Come next week, your delusions of being a champion are going to be stopped by the cold, hard reality of a Killer. Nothing can save you when I come crashing down on you, Little Knight. )

Title: Spectacle
Relationship: Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Dick Grayson, Conner Kent, Tim Drake, Cass Cain, Billy Batson
Continuity: Heroes of the Squared Circle, a DC/pro wrestling fusion (click for notes and all chapters).
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13
Word Count 2200
Summary: The first two matches in the tournament are held, and Dick makes a request of Bruce.

( You’re a charmer, Kent. I see why they keep you around, even if you never could wrestle worth a damn. )

Title: His Untamed Heart
Pairing/Characters: Superman/Batman; Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Fandom: DC Comics
Summary: When Bruce Wayne discovers that the male leads of a variety of romance novels bear an uncanny resemblance to him, he decides to take matters into his own hands.
Word Count: 3700
Note: Inspired by a prompt I saw ages ago, in which Clark uses Bruce as the main character in a novel; as things tend to do with these two, events got...a little out of hand.

( Bruce could see himself lurking in each one, like a reflection in a distorted mirror (distorted to make him look ridiculously heroic and romantic, he thought with annoyance). )

ran_dezvous asked me about Detective Conan, a popular anime here in Japan!

When my husband and I first moved to Japan 15 years ago, we decided to watch some Japanese shows to try and practice our Japanese. One of the shows we chose was Meitantei (Famous Detective) Conan.

This was a terrible choice.

Meitantei Conan is a long-running animated series about a high school boy and amateur detective who, when he runs across the nefarious Black Organization, is given an experimental drug that is supposed to kill him, but (unbeknownst to the villains) de-ages him instead. He decides to pretend to be his own young cousin, taking the name Edogawa Conan (Edogawa sounds like Edgar in Japanese, from Edgar Allen Poe; Conan from Conan Doyle). Through a rather convenient set of plot devices, he eventually moves in with his semi-girlfriend Mouri Ran (who doesn't know who he is) and her incompetent detective father Mouri Kogoro. While searching for the secret of the Black Organization, he ends up helping Kogoro solve crimes by using a special dart that puts Kogoro to sleep at convenient times and a microphone that lets him impersonate and throw Kogoro's voice. Kogoro starts to become famous as "The Sleeping Detective" who solves crimes while in a sleep-like trance (it's Conan solving them, but Kogoro is happy to take the credit and even kind of believes he's doing it somehow).

It's a great show, but it's a terrible show to to be practicing your Japanese with, because a lot of the cases revolve around language riddles, and...wow, Japanese is not an easy language for that. So after a while we had to kind of give up watching it unsubbed, but years later we came back to it, because we had liked the characters and the conceit! We’re not caught up anymore, but for a while we were watching it very regularly. I think we’ll get back to it at some point, once the English subs have made some progress--we’re too invested in the long-term overarching plot not to find out how it all gets wound up someday...

Title: Clarity of Purpose, Chap. 20
Chapter Summary: Old friends are met, stories are told, and the Fellowship reaches Saynshar, capital of the East.
Relationship: Thorin/Bilbo
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, Denethor, Gimli, Dis, Arwen, Aragorn, Legolas, Theoden
Fandom: Hobbit/Lord of the Rings. Begins in 2968, twenty-six years after the events of "Clarity of Vision" and fifty years before the canonical events of "Lord of the Rings." Thus, characters' ages and the geopolitical situation will be different than LoTR canon!
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4000
Summary: Thorin Oakenshield and Bilbo Baggins have been parted for many years now, despite the love they bear each other. Now Thorin's research has uncovered a dire threat to Middle Earth--the Ring he carried a little while and then gave to Bilbo. Together with a group of companions composed of the different Free Peoples of Middle Earth, they must attempt to destroy the artifact before its Dark Lord can re-capture it.

( They come in their silken tents for a visit, then return to their walls and their ceilings. Easterlings and Wainriders are of the same blood, but their hearts are as different as dwarves and elves. )

crooked_halo asked me what my favorite season was! When I was growing up in Maine, or going to graduate school in Minnesota, it was always spring, but now living in Japan it's fall, for pretty much the same reason--it's the point when unbearable weather breaks and you don't quail at the idea of leaving the house again. In the Northern US, spring is when your gut stops clenching up when you walk outdoors, things start to smell nice again, and everything starts to come to life once more. But here in central Japan, winters are pretty mild and summers are the agonizing season, where you step out of the house and are immediately drenched in disgusting sweat, where the air seems to cling to you like soup and the sun is your vicious enemy. Fall is when air starts to feel like air again as opposed to swimming through blood; things become crisp and clean and pleasant again and it's such a relief. I enjoy every day of it!

navaan asked me to name some things I like from the New 52! I'll give you my four current favorite titles and tell you why each one has something I love in them.

1. Action Comics
My favorite take on Superman in the New 52. Greg Pak's Superman is very much Clark, rooted in Smallville (a fair number of his stories have revolved around Smallville, which contains a refreshing mix of names and faces from lots of different ethnic backgrounds), a decent guy and a hero. He's very much in the "You can't save them all!"/"WATCH ME!" vein of Superman heroics, and feels both young and mature at the same time.

2. Batman Eternal
This weekly series had a kind of rough beginning and I think it still suffers from some herky-jerky storytelling due to having a lot of different writers, but it has the advantage of having a bunch of very interesting female characters it's developing, including Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, Harper Row/Bluebird, Julia Pennyworth (taking over for her father while he's injured), and a Selina Kyle who's currently running the Gotham underworld and doing pretty well at it, thank you very much. Basically any title that brings us a Steph Brown who's resourceful, talented, and (maybe most importantly) was never tortured to death with a power drill gets a thumbs-up from me, but it's winning me over as a story of its own too.

3. Gotham Academy
This one's still really young and I'm not sure where it's going, but it's a very fun "Harry Potter meets Gotham" premise: Olive Silverlock and her friend Maps Mizoguchi are students at Gotham Academy, which may be haunted and definitely has a lot of secrets. I've spotted a bunch of little Easter eggs that make me really excited to see where this goes, and the art and writing style are refreshingly different from most of the rest of the New 52.

4. Grayson
I was pretty dubious about this one, which has a presumed-dead Dick Grayson going undercover in Spyral, the secret spy society, but boy have I been won over. Seeley and King write Dick Grayson like a dream, maybe my favorite version of Dick that I've read--not just in the reboot but in modern comic books. The tension in the book is whether Dick can keep his heroic ethics while working for the shadowy and frankly sinister Spyral, and so far the answer is a resounding "He's Dick Grayson, of course he stays a hero." The series also has a rebooted version of Helena Bertinelli, who works for Spyral but also seems like a good person and has definitely got chemistry with Dick. As a side, snarky note, I found it interesting and frustrating when I posted some scans from this title on Tumblr that a couple of people reblogged it and added some pretty angry commentary about how they "made Helena so damn ugly" in the reboot. So what does this take on Helena look like?



Oh, also "Grayson" has some really gripping spy plots that are very well-written! Basically, imagine Dick as an anti-gun James Bond (there was a really powerful issue about his refusal to use a gun) with all of the action and wit and--I won't say none because nothing's perfect, but only a tiny fraction of the misogyny.

Mekare asked me to talk a little bit about Théoden and Denethor in Clarity of Purpose!

Here's where I confess that part of why the series jumps forward is that I REALLY wanted to write young versions of Théoden and Denethor. Obviously they never interact in canon, but I've always been fascinated by the implied relationship between these two rulers--for surely they had one! They're such different people I can't imagine they'd get along easily--yet in the books (not so in the movies) Denethor himself commands the beacons to be lit to summon the Rohirrim, and part of his final despair is his belief that Théoden has not come to help.

I always liked Denethor in the books--he was harsh and stern, yes, but Pippin seems to honestly respect him rather than hold him in contempt as movie-Pippin does. Even Gandalf says that he's more like Faramir than Boromir: "He is not like other men of this time, Pippin. . . By some chance the blood of Westernesse runs nearly true in him, as it does in his other son, Faramir, but did not in Boromir, who he loved best." He's fought a long, cruel, seemingly hopeless battle against Mordor for decades. He's grown old defending Minas Tirith, taking back and losing again and again the ruined city of Osgiliath--so many lives lost over and over for a desolate land where nothing grows any longer, but which cannot be allowed to fall into enemy hands for strategic reasons. He's lost his wife, his elder son, the heart of his younger son, and all the while Sauron whispers despair to him. He gives in and in that he is less than Théoden, but we only see him at his point of snapping, not the decades of exhausting warfare that brought him there. I really wanted to save him--and by implication save Finduilas, Boromir, and Faramir--so I stepped into the past to do so.

Théoden’s story remains more unchanged, and I feel like a young Théoden would be a great deal like the rejuvenated king we see at the end of Return of the King, so he was easier to extrapolate backwards. Denethor was tougher! I had to guess at certain things--like, how did it feel to have your father trust and admire a man who you strongly suspect plans to take the throne back from him? And what would that mean to you? If, for example, Denethor were recently betrothed to (and deeply in love with) the Princess of Dol Amroth, and the true high king returned--he would lose so much of his status and political power in one stroke. Would the king of Dol Amroth still support a union with him? Would he find himself without a home, without a future, with his love wedded to Aragorn or Théoden or some other lord? I imagine Denethor knows these are selfish thoughts and is ashamed of them, but he’s never had a great deal of self-confidence (that, combined with pride--a terrible combination--is what Sauron preyed on), and I think they would haunt him. That’s why he’s so convinced in Clarity of Purpose that Estel secretly covets the Ring--because he can’t bear to think that the true king actually deserves to have his post back.

I’ve actually already written two Appendices dealing with Denethor: The Tale of Finduilas and Denethor and The Lives of Denethor and Théoden. The former tells the story of how Finduilas and Denethor meet and marry, and how their life unfolds after the series is over. The latter tells the story of Théoden and Denethor’s first meeting when Théoden is 12 and Denethor is 30 (spoiler: it doesn’t go well!) and what happens to the Prince of Rohan and the Steward’s Son after the series is over. And because you were patient and kind and read my crazy thoughts about Denethor II, most disliked character in Tolkien (beyond Alfrid), I will “reward” you with two clips from said Appendices!

From “The Tale of Finduilas and Denethor,” in which Denethor has reluctantly traveled to Dol Amroth to ask for the hand of Princess Finduilas, whom he has never met:

As his companions and retinue stabled their horses and prepared to enter the castle and meet the royal family, Denethor found himself suddenly sick at heart and unable to bear the walls around him. He slipped away and wandered he knew not where along the cliffs of Dol Amroth, his thoughts in turmoil, and the sea-birds circled around him and looked at him curiously.

It was then he saw a figure clinging to the cliffs: a slight woman in green and brown, her dark hair bound loosely behind her, scrambling for a foothold. Without thinking, he swung down the dizzying cliffs to drag her back to safety.

Yet to his surprise, the maiden showed him no gratitude. "Villain!" she cried, stamping one booted foot, "You have startled the petrels, and caused me to lose my sketchbook as well!"

"A thousand apologies," he said, bowing low, "But you seemed to me in peril."

"All my work is lost," she stormed at him, unmollified, and he noticed her eyes were the dark gray of a tempest-torn sea.

"Forgive me," he said. "I am..." But he found the usual recitation of titles and rank held no allure for him in front of this slim brown maid, and he finished simply, "My name is Denethor."

It seemed to him she startled at his words, but then she smiled. "You may call me Faelivrin," she said.

From “The Lives of Denethor and Théoden,” in which 12-year-old Théoden is a page riding with his uncle’s warband, patrolling the borders of Rohan:

Then one day his band was patrolling near the border of Gondor, and they came across a war-band of men from Minas Tirith. Now, relations between the two nations at this time were cordial but not overly warm, and so the Rohirrim approached the Gondorians with respect but not with love. And because he had spent his early years in Gondor and his speech was the least accented, they sent Théoden to parley.

A man dismounted from a black stallion to meet with Théoden between their two bands, dressed in light armor, black with a white tree blazoned upon it. He was clear of eye and fair of face, a man full-grown unlike Théoden, but beardless, and slender rather than strong-thewed, and Théoden secretly felt he seemed not as manly as the Rohirrim. But he dismounted as well and hailed him, saying, "Well met, man of Gondor! I ask to speak to your leader."

"You speak with him now," the man said coldly.

But Théoden burst then into laughter. "Nay, you jest," he said, pointing to the black stallion. "For surely no lord of Minas Tirith would ride such a spavined nag as that!"

Then Denethor--for it was he indeed--was stung to the quick, for he was proud of the stallion he had chosen himself to be his mount. "How dare you speak so to the son of the Steward of Gondor!" he said in a rage.

*facepalms for both of them*

starsandsea asked me to talk about Tolkien a little! And I think this time I'm going to take her literally and talk about the Professor a bit: specifically, his relationship with his wife and the way that became a theme in his work.

For starters, you have to know (and most of you probably do) that the Aragorn/Arwen love story in Lord of the Rings is basically a retelling of the Silmarillion's major love story between Beren and Luthien. Many of the basics of the two stories are exactly the same: a human man encounters by chance an elven maiden dancing in a forest and they fall in love. But the fates of Elves and Men are different: Elves live on eternally, while Men die and pass beyond the world to an unknown fate. In both stories, the maiden's father resists their love and sets obstacles in their way, demanding extravagant proofs of the man's worthiness. In both stories, the man eventually proves his worth and wins the hand of the maiden. And in both stories, the maiden chooses to forsake her immortal birthright and become mortal; when the man dies the maiden dies also of grief and her soul is lost to Arda forever.

What I didn't know as a younger reader was that Beren and Luthien (and thus by extension Aragorn and Arwen) are basically self-inserts for Tolkien and his wife. He met Edith when he was 16 and she was 19 (an age difference that at the time must have felt like the age difference between his female elves and male humans) and fell in love. His guardian (they were both orphans) disapproved and forbade him to have any contact with her until he was 21. Tolkien acquiesced and cut all ties for four years--and on the day of his 21st birthday wrote her a letter saying he loved her still and he hoped she would marry him. She wrote back saying she was engaged to someone else, but made it clear that she had assumed he had forgotten her and she still loved him. Tolkien immediately set off to where she was living, she met him at the station, and at the end of the day returned her ring and was engaged to Tolkien. They married soon after, just before he left to fight in France. She was Anglican and converted to Roman Catholicism to marry him--by the beliefs of the time, effectively giving up her place in the afterlife, like Luthien and Arwen.

When he was on leave from World War I, he came back to England and met her in a blossoming hemlock grove, where she danced for him--an image that became essential to both of his great romances. After the war, they had four children together, and although their marriage wasn't always happy (they clashed about religion; she didn't like being the wife of a professor) it seems to have been a good marriage.

But here is where real life and the canon part ways, and here is where I always tear up: unlike Luthien and Arwen, Edith Tolkien died first. Tolkien wrote his son after her death, "I never called Edith Luthien--but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. . . . But the story has gone crooked, & I am left, and I cannot plead before the inexorable Mandos."

With this in mind, it always seems both fitting and heartbreaking that as far as Tolkien was concerned, the death of Arwen is the end of his world: “There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by the men that come after, and elanor and nimphredil bloom no more east of the sea.

“Here ends this tale, as it has come to us from the South; and with the passing of Evenstar no more is said in this book of the days of old.”

Prince0froses asked me for some favorite songs! I have to preface this by saying that my taste in music is both omnivorous and terrible--give me something simple and cheery and I'm happy. And I had to pick a way to narrow down a bit, so I decided to go with "5 Songs that I loved or that meant a lot to me in 2014."

( An odd mix of music by DJ Earworm, Rosi Golan, Lewis Watson, Sakanaction, and CFO$ below the cut )