#rotmance

I’m going off the walls bonkers about this episode. They want to stop the turning of the pages. They want the stagnancy. But the stories, horrible things, want to be told they don’t want after. They only only ever want AGAIN.

LITERALLY.

[ID 1: “That’s how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you’d have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”

OUGH. if babs’ body is a reliquary then cytherea’s is a relic-turned-unholy-reliquary. and harrow’s is something else entirely.

are the pre-apocalypse lyctors sanctified? they were the disciples before the blast and after. i’d say it’s more likely that the cavs are saints, and the lyctors their reliquaries. they’re martyrs, after all. their eyes peek through, out of place like a tooth surrounded by halos of jewels.

the lyctor labs at canaan house and especially the various notes from one lyctor to another have definitely served as relics in the things-belonging-to-saints sense. and i’m still thinking about gideon’s original arm: is it a relic if it came off before he was a saint? are there saintly bits floating in the River where resurrection beasts chewed them off? do they wash up onshore?

it’s really interesting to think of the halls of the mithraeum (filled with the bones of heroes, literal references to the bejeweled catholic skeletons) vs the lyctor labs and bedrooms. the valiant cohort dead aren’t saints, but they get gussied up and beatified with gold. the lyctors are simultaneously TOO holy to leave relics behind (totally untouchable, like in the BoE intelligence file) and uncomfortably real and mundane, sleeping in beds and passing notes.

tarot reading for @rotmance

thank you for your patience! moving is hard! this was a really fun reading to do tho. both decks were Loud And Clear. they even agreed with each other!

guy who sews new Names onto his old friends and remakes them in the shapes he chooses. guy who is ripping up the dead from the ground with a new Name but it is one under his thumb. what the fuck. every strand of them is tied around the CHILD BONES of his crown.

O. Captain (@rotmance) is a writer who has worked in Edition #2 of Letters From Fairy Hill. It wrote the RPG "As Above, So Below," which you can find in page 5 of our second issue, or play independently here.

What type of art do you usually make? What medium, or what type of writing? I write things mostly! I'm a poet & fiction writer, and I sometimes make small ttrpgs!

Who's your favorite Mabel character to write about? What are your favorite motifs and recurrent imagery in the podcast? I like writing Mabel and Anna a lot; I really ought to try Juniper... I Am Always Thinking About Episode Eight Point Five Letter From Juniper And All Of That. Just All Of It.

What have you liked about working on the zine? It's been good to get back into making fan content! I am very excited to work on what I'm planning to do for this issue :eyes:

What do you like about the zine as a reader? It's cool to see different interpretations of the characters and of the language! The language of Mabel is one of my favorite things about the podcast so to see it filtered through other people's brains is so cool!

Finally, wanna share a Mabel hot take or theory? Mabel Podcast Has Burrowed Into My Brain And Started Growing Vines In There (More Vines My Head Is Swarming With Vines Already Irrespective Of Mabel Podcast)

You can find O. Captain's website here and its itch.io here.

ooohhh, what a good question to find in my inbox! i’m not sure how coherent my answer is going to be, but here we go! 

as far as lothiriel is concerned, i....of course have only a name and a basic post-war outline of her life (marries eomer, becomes queen of rohan, has at least one baby, etc). BUT that hasn’t stopped me from coming up with my own little headcanons for her. some of them are based more on elements of canon than others, but they’ve all come together to form my own personal interpretation of her: 

for some reason i’ve decided that she’s an infj, if you’re interested in myers-briggs ! 

she’s just generally very Soft: gentle, affectionate, quick to laughter, etc 

but she also has a sharp wit and she’s perfectly capable of holding her own in any (verbal) argument 

loves her brothers but also loves to be a little sister and tease/annoy them and get them to do what she wants 

loves learning, particularly history/languages 

a little sheltered, a little naive, but a quick learner. she’s very empathetic/intuitive 

basically, i like her to be all of these things because they (and lothiriel’s background in general with her whole family/place in society/etc) make a good foil for eomer’s characteristics. i do like to think of her as sort of an odd duck in rohan, at first. it takes her a little while to get used to it because it’s so different from dol amroth. but she loves it for those differences, and eventually settles in quite well. 

which leads into what i think of eomer and lothiriel’s relationship! 

at the end of the day, i like them to be a love match. particularly because everyone else in the story who ends up married gets one, and i don’t like to think of them as the only ones who weren’t. (which isn’t to say that i haven’t/won’t play with the totally-arranged-political-marriage-leading-to-love trope, because i have and will!) i’m not sure i’d say it was love at first sight with them, but i do think they were immediately attracted to each other and that it all went from there. 

i generally think of them as being a little bit shy around each other at first, in a certain sort of way. mostly in that they both fall pretty quickly, which they both find frightening for different reasons. and then there’s the matter of not knowing that the other one is also very much in love with them and not wanting to let on before they do know, etc. they dance around each other for a little bit before they finally figure everything out, but once they do? they fall very deeply for each other. 

i see them working really well as a team. where one is weak the other’s strengths make up for it, etc. they’re definitely friends as well as romantic partners,