Summer Oncoming

[bunn]

The bluebells are fading now, but this weekend I caught these just still scented in the sunlight at Grenofen on the edge of Dartmoor, on a short walk with my mother.  It was rather warm, and we retired to the cafe at the top of the lane for smoothies and ice cream.  The cafe used to be a pub, but there's more market now for selling tea and cakes to walkers than beer.


And on Monday we took the canoe out from Saltash and explored Tamerton Lake, which we have never been to before!
Up into the Hamoaze, carefully avoiding the speedboats, and under the railway bridge.

Tamerton has a huge and inexpensive housing estate, so it wasn't one of the quietest places we've ever canoed, as there were lots of people come down to the river to paddle on a hot day, but it was interesting to wander around.  There were a lot of fish about, you could see them leaping enthusiastically as the tide turned.



And here's a photo on our way out of the lake again, notable mostly for the Heavenly Seagull, top right.


What else has happened?  Oh, I finished writing my Sutcliff Swap fic, so that's all ready to go when the collection opens.  It has a terrible lack of historical notes, and I somehow feel something is missing, but I can't think of anything very historical to add.  It's a Sword at Sunset story and didn't seem to need as much research as I sometimes do.  Or perhaps writing Tolkien fic has spoiled me for things that can be quickly researched via Google.

I drew three new things, but they are all for Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang, so I'm not supposed to post them yet. 

Oh, and I wrote some Silmarillion things!:

Spirits, Names, and Why It’s Important to be Specific 1,465words but not all mine.

When Sauron the Necromancer calls a spirit back into the body he is torturing, he expects a half-broken Curufinwë; Celebrimbor, pushed even closer to the brink. Instead, he gets a very, very ticked off Curufinwë Fëanáro. Sauron feels like he should technically still have the upper hand in this situation, but in that moment, he has a very hard time believing it.

This was a collabfic: two people wrote the first two chapters and I wrote the last one.  I feel it actually works surprisingly well, given that it was written by three people who didn't know each other.  But it was a very fun idea (sadly, not mine!)

The Passing of the King 966 words.
which is a short thing about Elros, Elrond's brother, and his death.  I decided I'd like a version of him that was more weird and Elven than people often write.

Lingering in the Hither Lands 13575 words.
Thangorodrim is broken, and the Elves believe that Evil has ended forever. There's a certain amount of tidying-up to be done.

I feel this one is very self-indulgent really, and I almost didn't post it because... well, I already wrote Return to Aman, which is LONG and all about Maglor and Elrond, because when I wrote Quenta Narquelion, I had to work out how 'love grew between them as little might be thought' and ended up convincing myself so thoroughly that it made me sad.  ONLY, Return to Aman can't be a fix for Quenta Narquelion, because I wrote them at the same time, and ended up dealing with a lot of things differently.

So, Lingering in the Hither lands was my very self-indulgent attempt to at least partially fix things for Maglor and Elrond in the Second Age in a way consistent with both Quenta Narquelion, and also with the 1937 version of the Silmarillion where Maglor doesn't wander off singing sadly into the sunset. But I somehow feel I really should make more effort to write things that don't have Maglor in them. Or Elrond, possibly, though given that all of Tolkien's works DO have Elrond, I feel that's somehow less of a problem.

Comments

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Wow! This is your day for fabulous photos! I adore the one with the seagull. They never cease to fascinate me--I see them all the time and I wonder if they are lost! Our neighborhood is probably about as far from the water as one can get in this city.

These stories look awesome! Cannot read them instantly, so I am going to bookmark them all right now.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I had hoped to catch a leaping fish, but I would have had to be lucky with the timing - I hadn't even noticed the seagull!

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Seagulls, at least in the US, are basically rats with wings--they'll go anywhere they're likely to find food, and if there's any sort of water, so much the better. It doesn't seem to matter to them whether it's salt or fresh. I've seen shopping malls that are miles from any body of water that have bunches of seagulls because of the trash lying about.

That said, all species of gull are protected both in the UK and in the US. This means that when you cook them in mid-air using the tight-beam microwave radar, the harbormaster in San Diego gets VERY cross with you. Or so my father says...

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

Such beautiful scenery!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It's a fabulous time of year.

[r-blackcat.livejournal.com]

Your photo are, as always, beautiful; but the first one has the feeling of something beleriandic, maybe some skirts of Doriath. It's absolutely fairy-talish! I've borrowed it for my wallpaper, I hope you don't mind.
Er... I don't suppose you publish your stories somewhere besides AO3? It started to ask for agreetment to some terms - several pages of difficult English text I have no time and brain to read right now... :(

[ylla.livejournal.com]

If it's the same thing I'm seeing, it's just the GDPR consent - you accept that if you post works or comments or profile info publicly, everyone will be able to see them, and so you should be careful about what personal info you share.

I'm not saying you shouldn't read it, but it's not something sinister that AO3 have done (it may or may not be something sinister that the EU have done, but that's not really AO3's fault!)

[r-blackcat.livejournal.com]

Well, if it's only about that... thanks for telling me. I was somehow reluctant to state that I've read smth when I actually have not, even if most likely nothing scary will come out of it.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

the lighting was particularly wonderful that day. There were may-trees in flower as well, but I couldn't get the bluebells and the may-blossom into one photo...

In theory, I try to put my Tolkien writing on Ao3, fanfiction.net and Silmarillion Writer's Guild, but in practice, Ao3 is the easiest of the three to use and that's where most of the readers are and I'm lazy. But I'm pretty sure the agreement thing is the standard GDPR waffle that you'll find on every website and doesn't imply anything much!

Maybe one day I'll put it all on a stand-alone site...

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

It's very hard to believe that there's a café selling ice cream and smoothies just 'at the top of the lane' from the first picture. You must live in one of the best places in the world! (If there was a second hand bookshop next to the café, there would be no contest!)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't tend to photograph or report on the grotty bits! But yes, that particular walk is brilliant. Alas, no bookshop though there is one in town not very far away!

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

We had about a week of spring and then it launched quite firmly into summer. The lilacs are done blooming, my rosa rugosa alba has started blooming, we've had thunderstorms every few days, and it is Decidedly Extremely Warm And Also Humid. Whee.

[hhimring]

I like the Elros fic a lot (like a lot of people already said on AO3). It also seems very consistent with how you write Elros elsewhere.
Those bits of HoME that have things like that sentence about Erestor in them are the ones I know and remember least well and there's some interesting stuff in there, as of course you just showed here!

(Did anyone happen to mention to you that the name of Elros's son is Manwendil rather than Manwedil?)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I can't even remember where I fell over that bit about Erestor now, but it stuck somehow...

Arg, no, nobody mentioned it! I wrote it rather fast and clearly didn't check it properly, sigh. I've fixed it, thanks!

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

You know, with a very small bit of tweaking, the heavenly seagull could be drawn/painted as a dragon instead...and I think it would look awesome.