R.M. Brown's Blog, page 12
July 17, 2024
honestly they really went off with red. such an incredibly beautiful color with so many incredible…
honestly they really went off with red. such an incredibly beautiful color with so many incredible words to describe different rich and vibrant shades. carmine. vermilion. scarlet. crimson. cinnabar. such a good color. one of my favorite genders
To anyone who believes fairy tale romances never happen in real life, may I remind you that JRR and…
To anyone who believes fairy tale romances never happen in real life, may I remind you that JRR and Edith Tolkien met and experienced a forbidden love in their youth, and then were separated for five whole years because of his guardian’s rules that he could not date till he was 21, and she got engaged to someone else only because she assumed he’d forgotten her and lost hope that she could ever be with him, but then on his 21st birthday, he wrote her a letter saying he still loved her and wanted to marry her, she responded basically saying ‘if I’d known you hadn’t left me on the shelf, I would never have said yes to anyone else,’ then a week later she greeted him at the train station and then immediately dumped her fiancé, and they got married and she converted to his religion and danced for him in a flowering field far away from the trenches into which he was drafted, which left such an impression that he crafted an entire story about the most beautiful maiden in the world who danced in the woods and made enormous sacrifices to be with the man she loved, and they had four kids and remained faithful to each other and blissfully grew old together and their gravestones are now marked with the names of that same fictional couple that he created, who broke every rule and overcame every possible obstacle to be together and get a happy ending, who only did all that because he based it all on their own real love story.
Knowing all this has always made this bit of Beren’s song instantly reduce me to tears:
Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backward hurled
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this—
the dawn, the dusk, the earth, the sea—
that Lúthien on a time should be!
Tolkien straight up wrote a poem that said “the world could end, but it wouldn’t have all been pointless, because she was in this world, however briefly, and that justified all the rest.” Kills me.
Who can outdo Wife Guy Tolkien? Dude was writing elaborate AUs where his wife is an impossibly beautiful magic-wielding immortal elf princess who fights Satan and wins to rescue her human boyfriend from Satan’s doom fortress. Flawless.
Final note: while they were dating, a favorite activity was to go to a local cafe with a balcony and throw sugar cubes into people’s hats.
July 15, 2024
images of foxes with things in their mouths…
images of foxes with things in their mouths…
eagerly awaiting the day daniel radcliffe, elijah wood, and robert pattinson just make the most…
eagerly awaiting the day daniel radcliffe, elijah wood, and robert pattinson just make the most fucked up bizarre unmarketable film together
Like to charge, reblog to cast.
July 14, 2024
The discovery of the statue of Antinous in Delphi, Greece in 1894
The discovery of the statue of Antinous in Delphi, Greece in 1894
Really obsessed with this one like how old cameras worked making everyone blurry against the statue and just makes you realize how long the statue has been right. There.
liz truss let herself down, she let her party down, but most of all she lettuce down
liz truss let herself down, she let her party down, but most of all she lettuce down
July 11, 2024
follow me on tumblr dot com
the idealized version of my tomorrow self will fix this
not again
July 10, 2024
Month names in fantasy settings
Fantasy readers and writers, I’m super curious: when you’re reading or writing a story in a fantasy setting, do you prefer:
A) brand-spanking new original names for months and days that align with that world’s calendar and have nothing to do with Julius Caesar or Pope Gregory XIII
B) recognisable months named after your favourite Roman emperor
It was never something I ever thought about in a great amount of detail until the subject incidentally cropped up in two separate reviews on two separate pieces of work I was reading. Both reviewers (and people in their comments) felt that their immersion was immediately broken the moment they saw the word ‘January’ or 'July’. They were then forced to contend with the fact that this must mean that Julius Caesar somehow, somewhere, existed in this world. Which, as you can imagine, is pretty distracting.
And my first thought was oh shit they have January, and May, and June, and November, and Monday, and Wednesday, and Sunday in Song of the Stag.
Rather than break my immersion, I always find the use of our names for days and months actually helps it. It gives me an anchoring point in the world, so if I see that it’s 'June’ in any particular fantasy world, I have an immediate sense of weather and feeling outwith the author’s descriptions of climate. World-building has never been my strong point, and when I’m wrapping my head around a new world, I enjoy the shorthand of Monday and Tuesday or January and February to contextualise the time around the characters, both when reading and writing. I’ve always viewed the use of these words as 'translations’. The characters maybe have their own word and concept for what we view as 'Sunday’, but the story has been adapted for an audience in our world, hence the use of our names for months or days.
In saying that though, I can see why that can be viewed as really short-sighted and limited in world-building, after all, there are so many layers of lore that can be uncovered by creating new names for months and days, from folklore and religion to industry and politics. Not to mention that not every fantasy world is going to be a cookie-cutter replica of Earth when it comes to physical geography. Who’s to say that June in *insert preferred fantasy world* is the same as ours? Coming up with original names and the lore behind those names can increase the feeling of a world tenfold and make it feel that much more real.
I suppose it comes down to different degrees of world-building? Hard vs soft, on a spectrum of what is important to you as a reader or writer.
Basically, this is a very long-winded poll. How do you prefer your months and days to be named?
