dhampyresa

The chances of anyone else having had the following specific experience are pretty much nil: When I read Tracy Deonn's Legendborn, I got tripped up by a false friend between Breton and Welsh.

Legendborn is a YA fantasy book in which a Black sixteen year old girl ends up involved in a secret society of descendants of the Arthurian knights who fight demons. They call the demons by Welsh names, so when "isel" and "uchel" had been explained already and "goruchel" was brought up I kinda skipped over the explanation going "it's uchel + gor as in korrigan with a mutation, cool, got it, moving on" and it... Was not that. So it was a bit of a record scratch when the goruchel's actuality showed up. NOT THAT THE AUTHOR COULD HAVE BEEN EXPECTED TO THINK THIS WOULD HAPPEN


More widely applicable review:

I enjoyed it. I like Bree and Sel a lot, both separately and together. Alice is MVP. LOVED the healer guy. I'll read the sequel.

I did think the pacing at the start was a bit slow and at the end a bit too fast -- expect for when Bree gets into a mental conversation with a ghost for however long it is and I was like "is time standing still for everyone else or are they having deadly swordfights while she's just chilling?"

There were too many characters. When one of them was revealed as a traitor, my only thought was "who the fuck is this?!"

I am not a fan of love triangles, but this one was ok because (a) it's Arthuriana, I was braced for it and (b) it's an actual triangle, ie one of the two dudes have an important relationship/care about each other.

I cannot speak about how the themes of Black (generational) trauma were handled, but the author is a US Black woman. Saw reviews saying it was welldone.

I liked how the grief was handled.

I did like

bit of Merlin lore

that it used the "son of a demon" Merlin origin story

.

One thing that really REALLY bugged me though was the complete and utter lack of any reference to any of the female characters in Arthuriana. This is especially egregious when you consider that the titular descendants of the Knights of the Round Table include descendants of ARTHUR AND LANCELOT. #JusticeForGuinevere2023

Overall: Enjoyed it. Cover is gorgeous. Curious about where it's going, will read the sequel.

I have returned and have posted fic.

Six fics, some I posted a while back and forgot to talk about here (first two), two I posted before travelling but stuck into the Anonymous collection until now (next two) and two I just posted, because I just titled/finished them (last two).

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Splinter (1440 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Sara Lance
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Summary: Sara Lance and the things that never happened to her.

The fic I wrote for this year's everywoman. I wished I'd been able to make it as long as I wanted to, but alas I couldn't.

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Light before us (555 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ancient History RPF
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Livia Drusilla, Octavia Minor
Summary: Livia visits her sister-in-law.

The fic I wrote for history_exchange . The title is the first line of Indochine's Little Dolls, translated into English. (I was kind of on a giant Indochine kick for a few months there.)

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The Once and Future Camelot (The It's Only A Model Remix) (1186 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Demon Knights
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Madame Xanadu (Demon Knights), Merlin (Demon Knights), Sir Ystin | Shining Knight (Demon Knights)
Additional Tags: Future Fic, IN SPACE!
Summary:

This is a very different Camelot, with spaceships and science and technology the world has never seen.

Xanadu seeks out Merlin.

My fic for femmeremix . By sheer coincidence, I had just found this fic a few days before assignments went out. Clearly this was A Sign. The italicised line in the summary is from the original fic and it's such a great image I had to something with it.

Demon Knights actually one of the few Anglophone canons that has a proper Merlin and the fact that he's canonically demonspawn and ages backwards in it is part of why. The bit about him not having a soul now that he's under seven is based on a sort of obscure bit of French folklore than holds the seventh birthday as when children acquire a soul.

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DEFCON 3 (1530 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Natasha Romanov
Summary: Natasha hunted HYDRA to Miami. She wasn't the only one.

The fic I wrote for muccamukk 's MCU Rolling Remix challenge. The challenge was great fun! I wish I'd had time to go through the fics thoroughly while they were still anon, but alas.

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The Crack of Ice (3046 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America (Movies)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Characters: Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, Wanda Maximoff
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting
Summary: Steve's identity as the Avatar was a closely guarded secret. Yet trouble still had a way of finding him.

True story: This fic has literally been finished since JANUARY 2016. It just took me fucking ages to find a title for it.

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Five people on StarKiller Base who didn't listen to Anakin Skywalker (and one who did) (3235 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Ensemble (The Force Awakens), Obi-Wan Kenobi
Additional Tags: Force Ghosts
Summary: Being a ghost, Anakin thought, was very frustrating.

This fic first suffered Severe Tone Shift Syndrome when Obi-Wan showed up (did you know him and Anakin have issues?), then spent months being literally ten sentences from being done which was incredibly frustrating, but I finally made it work.

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And now, sleep.

Alright everybody settle down, it's story time! I'm going to talk to you about the Arthurian legend as I know it in the hope of making you see how wrong on the internet you are.

But first, some context: my first memory of anything Arthuriana related is being wee (let's say six years old or so) and reading a book. I'm pretty sure the book was La Forêt aux 100 sortilèges or at the very least another from that line of illustrated choose-your-own-adventure books. I was reading the book and I stopped. I carried the book all the way to where my mother was, taking care not to lose  my place.

The book was wrong.

On the double-page spread, one I can still see in my mind, the choice you had to make was how to save an emprisonned knight of the round table. So far, so good, right? No, because Morgane had put him there and that simply couldn't be right. I mean, water is wet, fire burns, Morgane is good, everyone knows that.

So I asked what was wrong with the book, why was Morgane evil in it? "Sometimes, in books, Morgane is evil."

That was the moment I started paying attention to Arthurian legend(s).

What's interesting to me, though, is that I have absolutely no recollection of ever learning about Morgane, Viviane and Merlin before this incident -- it was just of those immutable facts of the universe that you just know. Because of this, there are moments in what I'm going to retell where I could tell you who told me (my uncle, my grandma, my great-uncle, that one dude from [town on the other side of Brittany where they get the story wrong]...), but mostly I can't, so you'll just have to take my word for it that that's how the story goes.

(I don't know if you've ever tried to build a narrative out of oral tradition, but it's hard and I'm no Elias Lönnrot. Also, I translating from French and breton French at that, so cut me some slack. Seams are gonna show.)

( In which Morgane is good and Merlin is not AS IT SHOULD BE )

Okay, that should cover most of it, I think. (Also the Fisher King/le roi pecheur is Perceval's grandfather.)

 First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR y'all! I hope 2014 is awesome for you.

I got two fics for yuletide: Transverse orientation by perryvic and/or Zaganthi (I honestly have no idea what's up with the authorship of this fic) in the Lucifer (comics) fandom, a reunion fic between Elaine and Lucifer that is pretty great and a treat, The Horsewoman's Tale by skazka (samgrass ) in the Demon Knights fandom, a fic where Horsewoman and Ystin (+ Al Jabr) tag along with the pilgrims from Canterbury Tales while looking for a weird saint relic. You should all read it, even if you know nothing about Canterbury Tales, because I didn't, but it was utterly awesome anyway.


I wrote 6 fics, in 6 fandoms. I'll do reveals in alphabetical order of fic title since that (coincidentally) puts my main assignment first.

( Fandoms are: Norse mythology/Sundown: Whispers of Raganrok, Batgirl v2, Ancient History RPF, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Demon Knights )

In total, I wrote 13 701 words of fic and almost 2k on those very same fics. (I tend to overthink things and could write many more words on these fics (up to and including full-on DVD commentary), like for all my fics, but I've already bored you enough as it is. Unless you'd like to ask me to.)