My Desire To Read Every Tam Lin Adaptation Versus My Complete Lack Of Desire To Read Acotar

my desire to read every tam lin adaptation versus my complete lack of desire to read acotar

Midnight Sun Drinking Game

Every time Eddie thinks about killing, maiming, or general negative thoughts against poor Mike Newton

...That’s it. That’s literally all you need to get blackout drunk.

I've seen increasing buzz around here about Howl's Moving Castle (book). I think you all deserve to know that all of Diana Wynne Jones's books are filled with characters and plots that are absolutely as delightful and unhinged as that one.

Some Actual Plots include:

Dogsbody - The star Sirius is accused of murder and sentenced to exile on Earth in the body of a dog until he finds a magical item called a Zoi. He's adopted by a young Irish girl living with her abusive and neglectful English relatives. He has to balance his desire to find the Zoi with needing to be a Good Dog for the girl who takes care of him. Also the Wild Hunt is there. Hexwood - A girl finds a magical wood behind her house where she meets a wizard who thinks he's a convict of the intergalactic government, a boy created by the man to destroy said government, and a robot found in a junk heap. The magic wood is actually an alternate reality being generated by an AI who has a grudge to settle with the head of said government. The book is about abuse, PTSD, and trauma. The Dark Lord of Derkholm - Magical world is being destroyed by a company using it as an isekai amusement park for people from another dimension. Bio-wizard is appointed Dark Lord for the year, and he and his family (four of whom are bioengineered griffins) have to find a way to survive the season while everything is going wrong. Deep Secret - Interdimensional detective/diplomat/wizard needs to find a replacement for his deceased mentor. He does so at a fantasy convention, while trying to keep an interdimensional empire from collapsing into civil war after the emperor is assassinated along with all of his heirs.

She's an absolute master at weaving fantasy elements into the mundane world and writing from the PoV of kids. Her books are funny, clever, and full of delightful characters. I'm begging you all to check them out.

Actual Conversation about Inviting Mike Newton to the Wedding

Bella: Should we invite Mike? I mean, he's been a friend, but it also seems a little mean...

Edward:

Edward: No, we should definitely invite him.

Edward: Actually, we should give him a front row seat for that matter!

Frederic William Burton - Hellelil and Hildebrand, the meeting on the turret stairs (1864) National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Tam Lin retelling??????!!?!

I love Tam Lin, and I love Janet, but there are no retellings that take advantage of the fact that a) Janet was the kind of weirdo who set out one morning to lose her virginity to the mystical creature squatting on her land with a reputation for having sex with and/or demanding tolls from maidens, b) Tam Lin is what you get when a fairy queen takes a changeling, i.e., a badly-socialized, magic-addled waif of a Romantic poet, with more dramatic instincts than common sense.

All I want in my life is for to Janet march into the ruins of Carterhaugh, yanking up roses by their roots, and for Tam Lin to show up, demanding her kirtle green or the price of her maidenhead—

Only for her to—stay? afterwards???

And there’s this weird three-week span where Janet just…doesn’t leave, but keeps having sex with him, and looks at him with her serious dark eyes and a scowl, and then laughs at him—at him! Tam Lin, beloved of the Fairy Queen!—and Tam Lin falls inexorably and horribly in love. (He likes her ankles, and the unlovely knob of her knees; he kisses the pox-scars at her cheek and though Tam Lin is beautiful and fair beyond measure, he is jealous of her, the scar where the shears cut into her hand.)

She scoffs when he shows her magic. “What use is it?” she asks as he offers her the dazzling armful of jewels. “I can make cheese and parse a contract, speak a little Latin for the church-men and add up my father’s yearly taxes. Can your magic do that?”

She is different than everything he’s ever known, and Tam Lin is in love. Then she leaves.

She leaves.

Tam Lin spends exactly eight months pining, panicking, wondering if she will ever come back—and yes, writing epically bad poetry about Janet, His One True Love, Whom He Shall Tragically Pine For His Whole Life Long. He compares her to a dove. It’s bad. (The Fairy Queen has him sit beside her at Midsummer, and studies him with cool eyes, flat and lovely as silver. He shudders beneath them, he didn’t used to.)

(Afterwards, he is sick in a bush, his stomach trying to empty itself of the rich fairy sweets, the meats he loved in his youth, that taste of ash and nothing more on his tongue. Is it real? Janet had asked. I want nothing that is not real.)

Tam Lin pines so long and so longingly that he’s shocked when Janet herself shows up on the even of Halloween. “Are you sick?” he asks, because he’s never seen anyone’s middle swell up like that, like she swallowed something huge, and it sits in her stomach still.

“No, you ass,” Janet, His One True Love, says. “I’m with child.”

Tam Lin blinks. “Oh,” he says faintly.

……and she held him fast and feared him not, and afterwards, he’s curled up against her side in the weak morning light of All Souls’ Day. He’s still shivering from the feeling of his skin tearing off and then twisting up around him, twisting him into another shape. It’s fine, it’s fine, he just has to keep his paws—claws—hands fisted in Janet’s kirtle. Until he remembers that his throat is human can only make faint guttural noises, that he cannot purr. He cannot wind himself around her, coils of—no, no.

“Come on,” Janet says, not unkindly. Her fingers are very gentle, where they comb through his fur—hair. “Come. Come with me.”

She helps him to his feet, and Tam Lin is dizzy with how light he is, absent the Queen’s geas. He could detach from the earth and float away. 

Except Janet is there, holding onto his hands. “Well?” she asks, and it is the first time Tam Lin has seen her uncertain—her arms full of lion, a snake, and still she’d held tight, but now he is a man, and that is a different sort of animal.

“I follow you,” Tam Lin says, and he does.