Show me the way to my habitual abode

Thank you so much again!!! I can't wait to see what you come up with :D 

Title: Made by Maid
Summary: Aragorn and Isilmë discuss the reforging of Narsil.
Rating: General
Characters/Pairings: Aragorn/Arwen, Nethril/Isilmë
Warnings: None
Author's Notes:This fic takes place the morning after the events of my fic, To the Day's Rising, though it's not necessary to have read that first. This fic also crosses over slightly with the Pandë!verse, and i am hoping at least a couple more Pandë!verse/Suz!verse intersections will follow this :). Many thanks to pandemonium_213 for letting me borrow a certain lady smith, and to ladyelleth and zopyrus for the beta.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First of all, thank you so much in advance!! I am sure I am going to love whatever you write. I am fairly easy to please, and am a firm believer in “optional details are optional,” so if none of my prompts strike your fancy, please feel free to take liberties! That being said, prompts below:

Saga: Klara is my absolute favorite character of the comic, and I would absolutely love to see more of her backstory. What did she do before she met Barr? What was their early life together like? How was it raising Marko? Any of these would be great! Alternatively, I will never say no to Lying Cat & The Will adventures. 

Chronicles of Prydain: I would adore some Coll backstory here, and/or stories of him and Dallben having low-grade adventures around Caer Dallben. And/or Coll slowly figuring out how the heck to be a father figure to baby Taran. 

Thrawn Trilogy: I specifically only requested crew members of the Wild Karrde, mainly because I am in love with everyone on that ship and long to see more shenanigans and adventures starring everyone. 

Old Kingdom: I would LOVE to see more of Lirael and Sabriel interacting following the events of Abhorsen—you never get to see them interacting as sisters following the big reveal, and I imagine that would be a lot for them to both have to navigate. 

Thanks again, and happy Writing! 

<3 Suzelle 

Title: "It's Only a Paper, Moon"
Summary: Erestor abandons his chief assistant to night duty in Rivendell’s libraries. Merineth and Gilraen discuss history and explore the Noldorin archives.
Author's Note: This fic is a companion, of sorts, to zopyrus's story When the Moon Hits Your Eye, and she deserves great thanks for the inspiration, beta, and poaching allowances. Thanks also to sigridhr for the beta.

(Cross-posted to the Archive here!)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about death of the author w/r/t Tolkien, and how much I deeply, if unconsciously, rely on the concept in the creation of my own stories. Because I do strive, still, to create fic that is (mostly) canon-compliant, even if in many respects I’m going in with the specific agenda to subvert and undermine said canon. And I love the freedom to do that within the Tolkien legendarium, because all the texts we have are established in-universe as being secondary sources of a sort. And as any seasoned history major will tell you, secondary sources are imperfect, and fallible, and thus any inherent “rules” of this mythology are open to vast interpretation.

I find this incredibly freeing. I love the notion of wiggling through the cracks Tolkien left and wedging out a more powerful, fulfilling world in which the women of Middle-Earth are named, powerful, and diverse beings. ALL women, ordinary women, not just the queens and the warriors and the ‘man-hearted.’

But then, of course, no matter howe we choose to interpret the texts, it remains an entire legendarium created by a conservative old man, and the texts reflect that in so many cases that you couldn’t list them on two, much less twenty hands. So I’m also reluctant to fully declare death of the author, because it’s too easy. It lets Tolkien off the hook, and that’s not something that I want to do. He was sexist, he was racist, and that needs to be acknowledged when grappling with the grosser aspects of his legendarium. I don’t want to ignore or discount that even as I’m striving to undermine it and wedge myself between the cracks.

So, I suppose, take both of those contradicting thoughts I’m having into account as I roll out this Dúnedain Matriarchy Manifesto. I recognize that this is hardly the first time these conversations have been had, and I owe a great debt to the fabulous people who have discussed these issues in many forums before me. At the same time, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it discussed with regard to the women of the Dúnedain specifically, and I do want to bring that front and center here.