#magaramach

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: RRR (2022) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Ram (RRR 2022)/Bheem (RRR 2022), Ram (RRR 2022) & Sita (RRR 2022), Bheem (RRR 2022)/Sita (RRR 2022) Characters: Sita (RRR 2022), Malli (RRR 2022), Ram (RRR 2022), Bheem (RRR 2022) Additional Tags: i know this is a rare ship but HEAR ME OUT, codependent besties, pining for someone who you KNOW wants you back, grappling with the inherent selfishness of love, a surprising amount of cuddling Summary:

"You’ll marry Seetha, and you’ll care for her in the way that she deserves. I’ll spend my life loving you, you’ll spend yours loving me, and when you have children I’ll love them because they’re yours. And it will be enough.” “Will it?” Ram says, carefully. Bheem kisses his knuckles once more and sets his hand gently down. “It will have to be.”  

Five conversations held late at night, and one held in the day.

----

My ‘rec’ fic for the fandom. I already spoke a bit about this on Discord, but I just need t share it again. This work is just such a fantastic example of an exploration of an OT3 that feels grounded in canon, plausible, and in character. The dynamics are so believable and when I first read this fic, I kept coming back to it for nearly a week straight. 

So please, if you haven’t read the story please do. The author did an incredible job, especially with Sita’s POV. The snippet with just Bheem and Sita was so tender, my heart was in my throat the whole time. 

And the choices they made with Malli were just the cherry on top of a great cake. 

PRETTY LARGE SPOILERS AHEAD for this one but so;

Galadriel's plot and the Numenorean's plot is mostly tied together for season one, it's actually quite a clever way of getting around the time compression without getting rid of the two wars in my opinion. Essentially, Galadriel will be looking for evil, she will find it or have an idea of it being around. People will try to convince her to go back to Valinor and she'll nearly get there but then somehow get shipwrecked and picked up by Elendil. She will convince Miriel to lead Numenorean armies into Middle Earth to get at the nonspecific evil (probably this adar fellow we've been hearing about). But within that there will be an introduction of the whole 'Pharazon supporting the guilds and standing up for human issues against elven demands' etc etc I wont say anymore except that I do think this will be a nice catalyst for the rest of the Numenorean story in later seasons.

The Dwarves and Elves are tied up with each other in terms of some kind of political debate. Prince Durin and his Dad Durin disagree on how they should handle the elves, with Dad Durin being like 'Elves should leave we really don't need them anymore' etc etc and I hope they dont make him too mean so I can stan him but anyway. Elrond and Durin are friends, (the way they've been discussing Elrond and Durin's relationship has been so amusingly romantic but no they're just friends, looking forward to the fanfiction tho) Elrond is trying to weigh his convictions between his chosen people (elves) and promises made to his friends (Durin). Celebrimbor is encouraging him in this whole endeavour.

The hobbits are going to have this... admittedly convoluted looking plot surrounding both this mysterious meteor man (man fell from the sky as a meteor, he has no memories, they're taking care of him, he has special powers and I'm 100% certain it's Gandalf but I'm also really hoping it's saruman) but ALSO surrounding their travelling and whether they should change their ways. This will also involve Entwives somehow which I'm excited about.

There's a second human plot! Pre-numenorean village. This is where the elf Arondir is in love with his Bronwyn lass. Essentially, after morgoth' defeat, the humans who had worshipped Morgoth were forced to settle in these lands and change their ways whilst a group of elves watched over them. This was so long ago now that all the humans think the elves are being really goddamn annoying and should chill out. Arondir is one of these elves, Bronwyn is one of the humans who thinks they're being too overbearing. There's other stuff going on here but I'll stop there this is a bit too spoilery already.

I’ve gotten several messages about ‘this bird my soul’ recently, which is wild since I haven’t touched it in at least a year (years?) However, I’m always happy to answer a good question.

Most of what Tolkien has to say about Harad is less about Harad and more about Gondor’s relationship to Umbar---a port city in Near Harad settled by the Númenóreans, and the colony that most strongly resisted Sauron’s influence. (Umbar and Pelargir, Gondor’s main harbor, are considered Middle Earth’s legacy from sea-faring Númenór.) After Númenór falls, though, the Haradrim are painted as following/having fallen to Sauron. They are labeled “Black Númenóreans” in opposition to the early Gondorian kings; Umbar is fought over, a conflict exacerbated by Gondor’s expansion into territory held by the Northmen, Easterlings, and Haradrim. Eventually---and by that I mean two pages later in Appendix A---the Wainriders also make alliances with “men of Khand and Near Harad.”

(That’s another thing: Tolkien doesn’t paint “Harad” as a nation-state on the level of Gondor or Rohan; Near Harad and Far Harad are simply geographic regions where the Haradrim live.)

Umbar doesn’t return to Gondorian control until the Fourth Age, when Aragorn marches through with the reunited armies of Gondor and Arnor and takes it back. Symbolically this is important, since it means Aragorn reunites the Númenórean Empire-in-Exile. You...can interpret that how you want.

Anyway, in terms of how the Haradrim are described: they’re “warlike” with brown skin and black hair, they wear red livery. They carry scimitars, though it’s archers and spearmen who ride into battle on oliphaunts/mûmakil. They dress ornately for battle: “Gold rings in their ears; yes, lots of beautiful gold,” to quote Gollum, and the Haradrim soldier who dies in front of Sam has gold plaited in his hair.

Aaaand......that’s it. Everything else I’ve described about Harad in “this bird my soul” is either borrowed from the Mughal Empire (red sandstone palaces and kathak dance, the zenana, the empire) or something I personally made up.

The closest analogue might not even be the Mughal Empire! Tolkien describes the Haradrim’s spears as being “red tipped”---he could definitely mean the Chinese qiang, with its red horsehair tassel. War elephants always evoke Hannibal of Carthage for me, so maybe the back and forth between Umbar and Gondor is Middle Earth’s equivalent of the Punic Wars. (I strongly suspect their influence, especially considering Númenór’s pseudo-Atlantean origins and Carthage as a Phoenician city turned empire.) The scimitar is of Middle Eastern extraction, but the curved sabre carried by the Hussars is similar---and they were known for their elaborate red uniforms.

hi kiran im sorry this has been sitting in my inbox for weeks i really appreciate the questions !!

🧭 What was the key choice or decision you had to make for this story? If you had chosen differently, what would the story have turned into?

put me back in it was insanely easy to write because it changed so little from concept to execution. once I made some initial decisions it was like it was just fully formed in my brain. so the key initial thing I had to figure out was why Pete even wound up in the walk. and I’ve changed my mind a bit on his state of mind going in because when I first saw the movie I got fixated on it being so, like, Greek tragedy of this guy who's fixated on seeing the light losing his love and doing something he sees as so contrary to his core being. guy who is not suicidal or violent hits a turning point and commits a suicidal act of violence. so in put me back in it you see pete realizing there's a life after he completely loses anchoring parts of his identity and pulling himself back up from rock bottom. but now i think i see him as more suicidal to begin with even if he doesn't realize that about himself, so i think if i wrote it with that in mind the internal conflict would be more about realizing the ways his faux-zen "i'm calm because i genuinely don't care what happens to me" mindset was inadequately papering over self-disgust and suicidality.

🏴‍☠️ Were there any points in which your characters tried (or succeeded) to commit mutiny against your planned plot? Where did they most want to rebel?

oh dude. im abandoning this for a couple reasons (i think im going to recycle the ideas i liked from it but also that i need to completely start over or it'll just be a badly frankensteined story) but the biggest reason that isn't "too much sci fi plot that i can neither solve nor get re-interested in" is "conflict over sex dynamics that is no longer believable or interesting to me." one specific thing that got chucked from an earlier draft is i wanted ray to get into some kind of self-hatred-fueled situationship with a government agent, which i still think would be fun but i could NOT make it work

🔮Have you imagined what happens to [character(s)] in the future? Or does the story only exist to you as a moment in time?