#realm of the elderlings

drew kettricken from rote because she is basically the coolest person i’ve read and yall liked the last rote related thing i drew, so

Idk what I’m doing and you can’t stop me (:

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I get that we’re supposed to root for Wintrow but I cannot get behind him bonding with Vivacia because he’s Kyles son and Kyle should not have the ship

Kyle is one of the best (meaning: most hateable) fantasy villains I ever read, because he’s just so realistic. He’s not some dark lord or evil sorcerer fighting for power or doing heinous crimes. Instead he’s a violent, misogynistic, narcissist, who is convinced that everything he does is for his family’s sake. He’s a type of man most women have experience with, I’m sure many of the readers know a man like Kyle in their real life. Hobb writes him so well that sometimes it is actually difficult to read, it’s too close to real life experiences. And he’s named Kyle! He’s just some man, but still manages to be the worst person in this world.

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“‘What have they done to me, Fitz? Gods, what have they done to you, to mark you so? What has become of me, that I did not know you though I carried you in my arms?’ His cool fingers moved tentatively down my face, tracing the scar and the broken nose. He leaned down suddenly to rest his brow against mine. ‘When I recall how beautiful you were,’ he whispered brokenly, and then fell silent. The warm drip of his tears against my face felt scalding.”

star-leader:

2am sketch of the babies™

trans:

If I was a king, I’d have my little jester sit on my lap and I’d give him a kiss every time he makes me laugh.

FitzChivalry Farseer would think this then deny it to everyone including himself

Thymara to Tats and Rapskal in chapter 4

More RotE name nerding.

I just found out that Harts-horn (the name of Svanja and her father from the Tawny Man trilogy) is the name of a herb used an abortifacent.

bemusedlybespectacled:

I always find it kind of weird that matriarchal cultures in fiction are always “women fight and hunt, men stay home and care for the babies” because world-building-wise, it makes no sense

think about it. like, assuming that gender even works the same in this fantasy culture as it does in ours, with gender conflated with sex (because let’s be real, all of these stories assume that), men wouldn’t be the ones to make the babies, so why would they be the ones to care for the babies? why is fighting and hunting necessary for leadership?

writing a matriarchy this way is just lazy, because you’re just taking the patriarchy and just swapping the people in it, rather than actually swapping the culture. especially when there are so many other cool things you could explore. like, what if it’s not a swap of roles but of what society deems important?

maybe a matriarchy would have hunting and fighting be part of the man’s job, but undervalued. like taking the trash out or cleaning toilets: necessary, but gross, and not noble or interesting. maybe farming is now the most important thing, and is given a lot of spiritual and cultural weight.

how would law work? what crimes would exist, and what things would be considered too trivial to make illegal? who gets what property? why?

how would religion work? how would you mark time or the passage into adulthood? what would marriage look like? if bloodlines are through the mother, bastardy wouldn’t even be a concept - how does that work?

what qualities would be most important in a person? how would you define strengthorleadership? what knowledge would be the most coveted and protected? what acts or roles are considered useless or degrading?

like, you can’t just take our current society and say you’re turning it on its head when you’re just regurgitating it wholesale. you have to really think about why things are the way they are and change that. 

Exactly!

In fact, Robin Hobb wrote a matriarchal society very well in her Realm of the Elderlings saga. The Outislander men are the the fighters and the hunters, while women own the land and rule it, get to choose their partners (and also how permanent said partners are going to be), so bastardy really is not a concept there. I really like it how different kinds of society are explored in the Realm of the Elderlings: we have the “fantasy gender equality” in the Six Duchies, where both men and women do the jobs most often deemed male, like fighting; different shades of patriarchy from a rather light Bingtown version to the horrible, close to real world medieval patriarchy, Chalced style; matriarchy in the Out Islands; and (mild spoiler alert!) a budding new society, where gender and sexuality don’t matter at all (unfortunately for one of the main characters, even the Six Duchies are prone to homophobia).

Also - not exactly a matriarchy, but imo relevant to the post - society in The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson, which I’ve just started and am completely enamored with (just like with other Sanderson’s books). It’s a play on a “fantasy gender equality” type of setting, where women are not being discriminated against… except there is no gender equality at all. Men usually do men’s jobs, and women do women’s jobs, but for the fact that women’s jobs include everything that involves reading and writing. Women do science, art and economics, while it is frowned upon for a man to be literate at all (the clergy are an exception). Which makes for a very interesting and unusual setting. Again - I’ve just started the books, so I’m not sure if the theme of a woman wishing to pursue masculine arts is present there, but, knowing Sanderson, it most likely is.

hawkepockets:

character design sketches as of AQ

paunchsalazar:

from royal assassin

Hi, little flowers!
Remember that you can get merchan of my drawings of Fitzs and Fool, and Nighteyes

Prints, stikers… !!!

https://www.redbubble.com/es/people/MartAiConan/shop

Share is apreciated!

Thanks for your support!!

Happy “inmarcesible ” day!!! (unfading)
That’s my day of them It’s similar to the Elric brothers’ “don’t forget”.
I still love them ;_; !!!!!

Hope you like it!

I remind you that you have merchan of them on my redbubble shop!

LINK

Fitz and Fool © Robin Hobb

kaylewiswrites:

Happy Thursday everyone! It’s officially ‘curl up next to the fire with a good book’ season here in the northern hemisphere, and with some people lucky enough to have time off of school or work for the holiday season, they’ll need some books to read. 

I’d love everyone to give a recommendation (or two, or three) of the next book people should read and why! Make sure to include author and genre so people know what they’re getting into! This won’t be the last time I do one of these book rec type questions, so don’t worry if you can’t fit all your favorites in this time. 

All you have to do is reblog, comment, or send an ask with your book recommendations! Anyone and everyone is free to participate. 

I’m really looking forward to seeing what you guys recommend! If you don’t want to miss any titles, or if you don’t want to see me reblog the same post over and over again, the tag is ‘writeblr conversations’. If you want to join the conversation every Thursday, let me know and I’ll add you to the tag list:  @elybydarkness @tjswritingstuff​  @gettingitwrite​@gooseandcaboose​@julesruleswrites​@dawnhorizons​@kd-holloman​  @reininginthefirewriting​@writingonesdreams​@brb-writing​@celstefani​  @kirstenmcwriter​@no-negativity-writes@bardicfool​@nemowritesstuff​@wortfinder​@katekyo-bitch-reborn​@weareallfallengods​@carnationwrites​@seylaaurora​

Ooo! I can’t wait to go through the other notes and get some more books to read (as if I need more books to read)!

I would recommend basically anything by Robin Hobb. Her Realm of the Elderlings books are fantasy at its finest. To start at the beginning, you read the Farseer Trilogy which starts with Assassin’s Apprentice. It’s the story of an individual, but also of dragons and prophets and people and relationships and love. There are a lot of books in that universe now (I think 16?) but nine are my favorites: a trilogy of trilogies about Fitzchivalry Farseer.

I also highly highly recommend Kate Elliot’s Crossroads Trilogy, which starts with Spirit Gate. I picked the first two books up randomly from a used bookstore and suffered before getting my hands on the third and finally finishing reading the trilogy. (I tell you so you won’t make my mistake.) The world Elliott builds is strange and beautiful and vast but the stories are personal and human. And there are giant eagles. (Thank me later.)

theliviariane:

Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb

Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

silverbastardgoldenfool:

silverbastardgoldenfool:

Y'all ever just think about how the dragon keepers went and accidentally founded a gay utopia

To expand on this a little: so many fantasy worlds - perhaps the majority - have some sort of grounding in medieval times, AKA just a real shit time to be anything but a straight cis man. Most of RotE very much aligns with this standard, which isn’t to say the story is homophobic or exclusionary but that the world that serves the story is. The narrative may treat Othered characters sympathetically, but those characters are still going to suffer by nature of the society they must function within (even if that suffering is not overt or explicit; repression is suffering). Personally I don’t think including prejudices in your world building is inherently bad. But it’s not inherently good, either, and it has most certainly been done. It’s also a problem that these Othered characters are almost never protagonists, so we don’t actually get to delve into the experience of surviving in that world as someone who has to actually navigate that prejudice. More often than not these characters are just tragic footnotes in the hero’s story, or at best a pitiable sidekick. Then there’s the whole Fictional Other thing (such as the the reviled Wit) which is just……….. Moving on. What I’m saying is there is little variance in how these characters are treated in fiction, let alone fantasy. You get to a point where you want to see characters with all different kinds of identities doing all different kinds of things in all different kinds of stories, because hey, variety is cool.

What makes the Rain Wild Chronicles a breath of fresh air within the fantasy genre AND the larger RotE series is not only the nuanced depictions we get of gay people and their relationships, but the fact that although they cannot change the society they were born into, they ultimately find a home, a sense of belonging and happiness in the end. They create for themselves what no one else would give to them.

Basically, the gays are real, complex people who get to experience not only suffering but growth, romance, sex, challenges that go beyond their sexuality and an actual happy ending.

What’s important to note, too!!!!!! is that she also let this thread run into her much more popular Fitz books. Fitz, coming face to face with the reality of a society where two men can lovingly raise a child without being judged or endangered is important. He is confronted with a culture wherein this “kind” of love (which is really just love) is totally normalised. In this instance he is the stand-in for the society they all grew up in, and seeing him grapple with but ultimately accept this unsettling (to him) concept is not only an important moment for his character development but it is also a reminder of the exact kind of attitudes the dragon keepers have insulated themselves from, a reminder of why they need this place. Obviously if you’ve read all of RotE you also get the Tawny Man trilogy where homophobia is an ongoing theme. Fitz’s story in general has dealt with this stuff in both minor and major ways all along, so having his world and attitudes collide with Kelsingra brings a lot of that baggage to the table. Of course, it’s also a glimpse for him of a “could-have-been”. How different would Fitz’s story have been if he had grown up in a place like Kelsingra?

Anyway I could go on for ages about all this but suffice to say that even in 2019, even in so-called “progressive” countries the idea of Kelsingra, a completely safe place for outcasts and misfits, is still an incredibly powerful one. I think a lot of straight writers underestimate the pain and discomfort it brings queer people to constantly have to delve into these worlds where it is dangerous to be different. Because they think they’re showing us a window into the past, when really they are unwittingly holding up a mirror to our present.

the fool from the realm of the elderlingsseriesis a gay clown!

So I coloured the sketch from earlier. Spoilers for Assassin’s Fate below

Spoilers for Assassin’s Fate below the cut

After 200 pages of anxiety, 2 pages of pure love.

Farewell old friends for half of my life. Good luck with the hunt.

Beloved, I called him Beloved.