Book of Gates

According to the background essay on the Book of Gates, apparently the gate system of the underworld that it depicts is very similiar to the gate system in The Book of the Dead (not that I've noticed. sigh). The fact that this and other books put the passage through the gates before the judgment (weighing?) of the soul, I guess the there's quite a lot of stuff to take place before the Hall of Maat, chronologically. Since I don't wanna go back and look through the BotD for the exact refs there, I suppose I can use the BoG version of the 1-5th hours instead.

Actual text found here
Analysis of the Am-Tuat and Bood of Gates

( more )

YvtW: More on character placement

Just found this *delicious* site which has a list of Egypt's cooler ancient sites.

Avenue of the Sphinxes

Temple of Thebes

Goodness... why have them wake up to one giant Sphinx when I can have them dropped at the foot of a whole street-full of sphinx-like creatures? Besides, FBH made a crack about too many large metaphysical critters too, IIRC. *insert evil laughter*

So CBY gets the Avenue of the Sphinxes, one of the FBH's gets the Temple of Thebes, another of the FBH's gets dunked in the Nile, and the last one will be right across the river in West Luxor, where is conveniently located the Valley of Kings.

Meanwhile the rest of us will be up near Giza with the Pyramids of Khufu and the like. Hm... I suppose I can have Elrohir go talk with the Great Sphinx. It's not like the others can't confront the Great Sphinx in there own time, if they play their cards right. This way I can divvy up the personalities I wanna try out for the Sphinx(es)... The Great Sphinx will be the deep and serious one. CBY can have the Greek version. And I guess FBH can have the not-too-serious ones.

After much thought...

...I figure I'll put this up anyhow. If anyone out there is squicked by slash, they can skip this entry.

Anyway, I spent most of today reading this huge series by Capella. The pairing is A/L in the earlier fics, and mostly Legolas/Imrahil in the later ones. Now, A/L fics are dime a dozen all over the LOTR slash fandom. But I think this is the first time I've seen a Legolas/Imrahil fic. Fairly well written too.

Granted, there were a few themes and events in the stories that made me uncomfortable... not squicked or anything, but morality-wise, I'm not sure I agree with some of the lines of reasoning used in it. A few sentiments came a bit too close to being rationalized non-con, and a few of the character reactions to things came off a bit forced and unrealistic.

Oh yeah, and there was this one LOTR/Buffy xover that was just awful. Like watching a train wreck in action. The girl shouldn't write xovers, especially with slash in it. Seriously.