Buckwheat's doodles

for @grimae

Feeling grateful for the communal creativity of fandom and transformative works today. I love how collaborative fic writing and fanart is, how we're inspired not just by the source text but by each other. How we build on each other, both consciously and unconsciously. How sharing ideas, being generous with ideas, is foundational to our creativity, in contrast to the individualistic and proprietary attitudes you so often encounter in other creative and intellectual domains.

No, we're not always perfect, and we're not always supportive (we're only human), but in my experience the positive interactions, whether they be conversations or silent currents of inspiration travelling between minds, far outnumber the negative ones.

And while I know it's not expected, today I want to shout-out the creators who have had the biggest influence on my vision of Tolkien's world, its places and characters, and on my growth as a writer.

There are so many other people who've influenced me in different ways (support not least!!) but these are the people whose creations and style and thoughts activated some latent neurons in me and became part of my brain, showing themselves in ways both visible and invisible in everything I create.

@cuarthol @melestasflight @ettelene @i-am-a-lonely-visitor @jouissants @swanmaids @danmeiljie @zealouswerewolfcollector @clothonono @imindhowwelayinjune @thelioninmybed @maglors-anion-gap @bloodwingblackbird @silmaspens @anattmar @tari-cua @outofangband @exercise-of-trust @maedictus @naarisz @sesamenom @navyinks @mirra-kan @melkomelko @maedhrus @dawnfelagund @tzitzki @nailsinmywall @toastedbuckwheat @fieldsofemerie and Oshun and Encairion

Thank you for making me a better, more inspired writer!

Thank you so much for the tag and lovely words.

(click for quality - Tumblr hates me)

So happy to be able to share my submission for this year's @tolkienrsb Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang: Aredhel finding Eöl in Nan Elmoth.

Click here for @melestasflight ' s amazing story:

To Find a Home in the Twilight

Thoughts about some of my recent art

I feel that I’m blameless in this 🤔

can you please elaborate. i'm BEGGING you to elaborate

The proximity of Poland and Hungary in the 11th century is what gave seeds to the Polish-Hungarian friendship, which by the time of Liszt and Chopin would have been well established (the origins of the “Polak Węgier dwa bratanki/Lengyel magyar két jó barát” phrase reaches 18th c.). If anyone’s not familiar with the phrase, there’s an English wikipedia article about it.

Now we know that Liszt and Chopin were friends while living in Paris (The Chopin Institute made all surviving letters related to Chopin available online, there’s a multitude of letters written to Chopin from various people between 1831-1841 that casually mention his friendship with Liszt).

Although it’s just my assumption, it’s a bit hard to imagine that the common history and a similar position of Liszt and Chopin’s home countries had no bearing on their friendship. We know that their nationality was deeply important to both of them, whether in music (both of them used folk elements from their respective countries in their compositions), or in personal life (Chopin was part of Towarzystwo Literackie, a sort of a club of Polish romantics who emigrated to Paris after the failed uprising, later in life he also wished to be buried in Poland; and Liszt openly, publicly, proclaimed himself Hungarian and wrote about Hungarian culture in his books. On this subject, I find Liszt’s biography of Chopin very interesting in that it doesn’t focus on Chopin’s personal life but rather on Chopin’s culture, on the Polish folk elements in Chopin’s music, on Chopin’s Polish idea of hospitality, there’s even one chapter talking about the concept of żal lol) All this to say, national identity was important for both of them, and so we may assume that hey would have found a common ground for conversation based on their similar cultures/common history, and they would have felt sympathy for one another as two emigrants from oppressed countries.

Whether that is true or just my assumption, either way this is what draws me to them as a ship, and so my fanarts are indirectly caused by King Saint Stephen’s expansion of Hungary lol

By the way, it was a bit late when I wrote all this yesterday and I did so hastily, so I just want to add a couple things, and add some sources

My focus was specifically on Liszt and Chopin’s relationship to their nationalities so I sort of omitted the entire history of Polish-Hungarian friendship. There’s an English wiki article that doesn’t go in-depth into this subject but it gives a general outline in case anyone’s interested. TL;DR thorough the 800 years of a shared border, our countries have been unified through defensive alliances, personal unions, or the bloodline of our monarchs (can’t speak for Hungary, but some of Poland’s most beloved monarchs were Hungarian, such as King Jadwiga who unified Poland and Lithuania and by some is even venerated as the patroness of Poland, Saint Kunegunda, a Hungarian princess who married a Polish monarch, and who greatly contributed to the cultural exchange between our countries, or Stephan Báthory, a Hungarian prince who was elected King of Poland-Lithuania. The famous Polish hussars were born out of Báthory’s Hungarian military). I should add that even outside official military unions, our countries have often helped each other through military aid or by providing a safe space for immigrants. And in 19th century both of our countries were under a similar situation - Hungary under the Austrian rule, and Poland split between Prussia, Austria and Russia, and aided in each other’s uprisings.

Now I’d just like to quickly supplement sources of my initial post. I mentioned Liszt’s books. The most relevant to my post are:

Also extra sources:

Czerwone Tatry

@mimimarilynart ❤️❤️❤️

fíli in traditional polish clothing

They got randomly teleported to like, interwar Poland - don't even ask why