B2MEM 2012 - Last Days

[altariel]

I don't have much time for B2MeM this week, but I'm claiming my prompts, scribbling notes, and working through them when I get a chance. Here are my most recent efforts.

Prompts:
Poetic Forms: Cinquain
Off the Map's Edge: The Land of the Sun

Easternesse

Easternesse,
mountainous, mysterious,
source of sunrise,
stirred by soundless seas,
Rómenórë.

*

Prompts:
Facets of Faramir: Statesman
Meta: If [insert canon work] took place during WW1 or WW2

There'll Always Be An England

Childhood was a brief golden summer, blighted by his mother’s sudden death. After that came poetry, and the relative obscurity of the second son. A first at Balliol (history). He survived the first war, but scarred, besieged by tumultuous nightmares. Women of a certain type adored him for his cheekbones, the early loss of his mother, his sombre solitude, his kindness. Entering Parliament on his brother’s death, he understood the Nazi threat early. The backbenches beckoned, then vindication under the new PM. And as the bombs hit Dresden, he thought: I am not the man I imagined I would be.

Comments

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I like this....

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

Absolutely lovely. But I also wish to know about the woman this Faramir married.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Daughter of a doctor who goes to Newnham. Assigned to be his driver during the war. He retires from politics after the war so that she can contest a Parliamentary seat in the 1945 election. Something of a stir that she's a Labour candidate. Takes her a couple of goes, but she eventually gets elected, rising to become a minister for health during the first Wilson administration. Eventually made a life peer in her own right, after his death. Three children, one of whom is well-known feminist academic writing on female modernists.

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

So very perfect. Hearts.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Whilst I love the poem, the star is the second one - it gives me goose-bumps as it really is so very Faramir...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thank you, very much. I've not had the bandwidth to cope with many of the prompts from the Meta card (draws on intellectual resources I'm having to use for work at the moment), but combined with the "statesman" prompt, I was suddenly inspired.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

This is almost a non-sequitor - but whenever I use my icon of Faramir I think 'I know it is recognisably Faramir because of the films - but he isn't really very Faramir...'

And I have just concluded that Ben Barnes in his Prince Caspian and then King Caspian incarnations would really be much better!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The only Faramir that's ever really clicked for me is the one by Anke Eissmann (see icon). Ben Barnes is good, although contemporary actors are a bit too polished for me to get the genuinely grungy Middle-earth look. Michael Praed might work, but without the eighties haircut.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I fear that I am less of a fan of Anke Eismann's work than you, or many of my friends. I think it is the nurse in me - I have laid out healthier looking corpses...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I like El Greco too.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Ah - but only his corpses look quite as ill as poor Éowyn in the Anke Eismann pic.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Hee! I have this one on my wall. Well, I had it on the wall before we moved. Now I'm trying to decide which wall to put it on.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It is beautifully executed, and I do like the colours - it's just the idea of zombie Éowyn and Faramir that puts me off a bit...

However - I have just re-faced Faramir in my own mind and iconography. This is the 'slightly tanned from so many years of out-door life' Faramir - but I do think he would certainly have washed the muck off before he went to see his father whilst he was rangering. Certainly once he got to be Steward - and then this slightly less than tidy hair would be his one tiny rebellion against conformity!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Phew, I really did fall behind on comments! (I was up against a very tight, very non-negotiable deadline at the start of April, and have been pretty tired since then.)

I do like that icon! Yes, I can definitely see that Faramir. I absolutely agree about the slightly untidy hair! I bet it irritated the crap out of Denethor.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Ah, Faramir. Would he have encountered Peter Wimsey at Balliol or during WW1?

I know little of the cinquain but I'm always happy with a bit of alliteration. Are you happy with it?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Good question. I have a feeling that Wimsey was in Boromir's year at Eton, but I'm sure they would have crossed paths.

I am happy with the cinquain, although I chose the easiest kind to do (it's called a didactic cinquain, and it's to do with word count and types of word, rather than the main kind, which counts stresses), and I didn't get to explore some ideas I had about the East. But I like this one quite a lot.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Ouch! Good ending!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

I liked this.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :-)