#fairytale

"Can I entrust you with the keeping of my castle while I am gone, my queen?" "Yes." The weight of those countless keys felt daunting indeed, but Galadriel wrapped her fingers around the metal ring, determined to prove herself worthy of the task. She dared not look at one key in particular, but she could sense it hidden among its mundane companions, a sinister and tempting presence. Halbrand stepped forward, looming over her as his hand covered her own. She looked up to find his dark eyes watching her carefully. "Remember," he warned. "You may open every door in this castle but one." Galadriel swallowed the lump in her throat. "Take care of our kingdom and return to me unharmed. I will protect our home in your absence, my love."

What Lies Beyond the Door

Haladriel Retelling of Bluebeard's Castle by makeshiftdraco

Written for @tolkienfolkloreweek Day 3: Fairytales

Chapter Two: Curiosity Unlocked

Fandom: The Rings of Power and Tolkien's Legendarium (LOTR, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc)

Pairing: Galadriel/Halbrand|Sauron

Rating: Explicit

Status: In Progress

Description:

Halbrand is eager to welcome his bride into their new home, but Galadriel's marital bliss is quickly undermined by strange premonitions and elusive memories. Halbrand assures his queen that the many chambers in his castle are open to her...all except for one. As their honeymoon unravels, Galadriel is plagued by troubling questions. What secrets does her husband keep hidden behind that strange red door deep within the castle? And what is she willing to risk to uncover the truth?

(TLDR: Haladriel Retelling of Bluebeard's Castle)

(Check tags on AO3 for trigger warnings.)

🌹A Familiar Love🌹

So, I have a story I codenamed as I See A Dreamer, and you'll learn what it's real name is when I learn how to fucking draw the characters.

But the basic rundown of it is that it's like if Vox Machina was set in a universe like He-Man & She-Ra where you don't know what the time period is because there's a pirate crew in the same car as someone who was a Hollywood actor; there's no power system, everyone just has a theme and runs with it; physics has dysentery so people do things that don't make that much sense mechanically, like surfing on turtles; and the term "god" is as loose as physics's dysentric ass hole because the gods are not immortal and they age like normal people, but they look weird and are pretty strong.

So, I See A Dreamer isn't meant to be thought hard about, it's kinda meant to be accepted at face value. And that was helpful for freeing up brainspace thinking about the characters' arcs and storytelling, so that there was more emotional realism than physics realism.

But I realised a short while ago and verbalised it to my friends/siblings last night that I may have cornered myself with the timeline on something and I just need to accept it instead of changing anything.

One of the main villains, I'll call her Rapunzel since she's designed after a Desi version of Rapunzel from Tangled, gets redeemed and she's meant to be the first villain to be redeemed in the story.

Basic rundown is that she was in an arranged marriage with a man who wanted to be a wizard, both fled the wedding, and now they meet again on their own terms and find out they're both complete dorks and they get to actually know each other and have a relationship.

It's meant to be this whole thing about them having the choice to pursue each other instead of being expected to.

The matter has arisen that according to my calculations, their relationship progresses over the course of a couple of months before they get married. Even within the realm of fairy stories, that's somewhat realistic I guess?

My only gripe with it was the fact that I had written 2 other couples to have 2 and 5 years before they got married, but admittedly I had the benefit of not needing to keep track of the story's timeline that much to do so, and the five year couple did basically fall in love within a day of meeting each other and it was never elaborated where in the five years of spending their life together that they got married.

I don't want to try restructuring, I want to see where this ends up, and it's still gonna end up with the "married in a couple of months" thing, but it's a far better situation than being married within a couple days like most fairy stories. I just need to accept at some point that I am writing a fairy story.

Quick side note, the funny thing about Rapunzel and the wizard is that the reason at all why I have them doing anything adult in the story outside of the fact that it's Rated M is because I wrote them to have opposite body temperatures.

Rapunzel has a cold, nearly dead, body temperature while the wizard has a hot and dry body temperature. Gives another meaning to the phrase "steamy encounter" doesn't it?