thinky thoughts

I was thinking this morning about whether or not it would be possible to do Dust as an original -- not because I want to, mind, but just as kind of a mental experiment. (All honesty, it was because I saw this old post by N.K. Jemisin about her Inheritance Trilogy last night and have been thinking about it ever since.) I'm not talking about scrubbing off the serial numbers, mind, the way it's possible to do with some AU fic. Dust is an AU, yeah, but it isn't a deep space AU or a coffeeshop AU or otherwise a setting!AU (I'm sure there's a technical fannish term for these, but I don't know it off the top of my head). It's a canon divergence AU (I think that's the proper term, yeah?) with some pretty heady tropes and worldbuilding, if I can say so myself. At this point, it probably hangs onto Lewis's canon with very, very tenuous threads, but it is, at its core, a Narnia story. So if I took it out of that Narnian context, could it even still exist as a story? Without all that fannish background, could I tell a story that used the same the same themes and tropes as Dust does, with the same endgame?

My initial response was to say no. ( cut for length. I don't think there are any spoilers for Dust in here, but it's sometimes hard for me to tell. )

Hobbit art recs

Let's go for some beefcake today, shall we?

Thorin wearing a kilt by dwalinroxx
the next King Under the Mountain by kaetiegaard
mostly naked Thorin, Fili, and Kili and Bofur by spader7 (NSFW)
Kili: Cherry by em-mika
Thranduil: Narcissism by kaetiegaard (NSFW)

Sort of cheat since I included four in one, ehehehehehe. There will probably be another beefcake set, because you gotta love this fandom, man. Yes, do let's keep practicing dwarf anatomy, shall we, fanartists?