ForeverDawn

[luesmainblog]

thinking about the video where a bunch of guys get together to un-corrupt a blastoise that got bad egged years ago in a leafgreen game and how that whole scenario is like. the loving side of cosmic horror. you are a blastoise. you trust your trainer. you've been through countless battles together, and while they never say anything, you can tell your trainer loves you. what you don't know is that your trainer is, at all times, being puppeted by intelligent forces outside of your dimension, holding knowledge far beyond the scope of anything you could ever know. they know things about your world that you do not; that nobody in your world ever could. the distinction between your trainer and this creature is minimal. at the same time, this creature is not god. it does not have infinite knowledge; it understands far greater than you, yet in still a very limited capacity. they understand what your world is made up of and how it can be manipulated to fit your whims. this creature loves you. your trainer loves you. they love you so much that they want to help you become stronger. they manipulate the very laws of your world to attain this feat. however, they did it wrong. they didn't know what they were doing, and the makeup of your being- everything you ARE- was twisted. you are no longer a blastoise. you are a bad egg. your trainer remains the same as ever. everything continues on, the same as it ever was, yet you cannot be what you once were. your trainer tries over, and over, and OVER again to hatch you, but you never become what you once were. you are a bad egg. there are other bad eggs now, other pokemon you used to know; pokemon you helped your trainer catch, pokemon you may have even fought alongside. now you're all bad eggs, sealed away by ancient protective magic known as Code. you never knew such a thing existed. you wonder if you're dangerous now. your trainer sets you in a box. over the years, he forgets which box you're in. unbeknownst to you, the creature is panicking, trying everything it can possibly think of to restore you to your blastoise state. the creature is just a child. he carries the pain of your loss long into adulthood; in his mind, he is responsible for your death. in the grand scheme of the universe, you do not matter; you're a "game". a few lines of code and some pixels. you do not Exist. and yet, you are mourned. and yet many others just like you are mourned by many others just like him. the world has been still for many, many years. you don't know this, because your world does not contain an internal clock. time doesn't really exist for you; it's a concept far outside of your reality. and yet, it is important. your creature contacts another of its kind. it shares the story of its sin, the insignificant act of corrupting you beyond repair. it shares this story in hopes that it could save you. the other creature recalls its own destruction of a world not unlike yours. it agrees to help. many creatures within the world outside of yours have gathered all together, using technologies familiar and unfamiliar with one collective goal in mind: to rescue you. specifically you. your loss is widely considered nothing. and yet, they put in incredible effort. obstacle after obstacle, they perform miracles for your sake. they copy your world; they use strange windows to view it, they layer your world over itself many times over to view it from every angle. they dig deep into the very makeup of your universe just trying to find you. one of them uses a method that only he has access to, in all the world, to find you. and they do. you have lost your name and everything else that makes you you, but there is something that remains in tact, that makes you findable; a piece of "data", an invisible quality to you that you and your trainer would never see, something you could never possibly know about. this is what ultimately makes you you, and not another blastoise. slowly but surely, they begin to put you back together. it's much harder than it needs to be, it is far too much effort for one

creature in one game that will never be touched again, and yet they do it. they race against the clock, stressing endlessly, sweating bullets and crying out in relief when they finally find the exact values, the last pieces of invisible quality that makes it YOU. you are now a blastoise. you are now "legitimate" to the game. you do not know it yet, but your trainer - your creature - is waiting for you, excited to Transfer you into new worlds until you are where he wants you. until you are safe. you also do not know that at this time, two of you exist. there is the You, here, being put together, manipulated through the fabrics of reality to restore your original form. and there is the Original you; the one waiting home, on the cartridge. the Real you. you are a clone, but you are not. you are a new pokemon, but you are the original. you are both corrupted, and legitimate. you are many things. the new you is saved, and this version of your world- this version that has fixed you, and only you- is re-uploaded, overlayed and overwritten to the original. you safely arrive. You are a blastoise. You were a bad egg, for a short time. But now you are a blastoise again. your trainer acts the same as ever, because he cannot display anything that would suggest he notices the difference. you do not know what happened. you have no idea. you have no idea how much you are loved.

[ebottswake]

I’ll just leave this here....

[kleefkruid]

Every fun post on here that encourages people to have hobbies/be creative always gets an avalanche of "Some people are poor Karen" type reactions and respectfully, you're all super annoying. I've never lived above the poverty line and this is a list of hobbies I have that were cheap or entirely free:

Read books: Go to the library, lend a book from a friend

knitting, crochet, embroidery: Get some needles from the bargan store and ask around, people have leftovers from projects they'll happily give you. Thrift stores also often carry leftover fabric and other supplies. And talk about your hobby loud enough and an old lady will show up and gift you their whole collection, because there are way more old ladies with a closet full of wool than there are grandchildren who want to take up the hobby.

Origami/paper crafts: get some scrap paper and scissors, watch a youtube tutorial

walking: put on shoes open door

pilates/yoga/etc: get a mat or just use your carpet, watch a youtube tutorial

Houseplants: look online for people that swap plant cuttings. There are always people giving out stuff for free to get you started. If you're nice enough you'll probably get extra

gardening: You're gonna need some space for this one of course but you can just play around with seeds and cuttings from your grocery vegetables.

aquarium keeping is a bit of an obscure one but I got most of my stuff second hand for cheap or free and now I have a few thousand euro worth of material and plants.

drawing/art: You get very far just playing with bargan store materials. I did my entire art degree with mostly those.

writing: Rotate a cow in your head for free

cooking: again one you can make very expensive, but there are many budget recipes online for free. Look for African or Asian shops to get good rice and cheap spices.

Join a non-profit: Cities will have creative organisations who let you use woodworking machines or screen presses or laser cutters or 3D printers etc etc etc for a small fee. Some libraries also lend out materials.

candle making: You need some molds (cheap), wick, two old cooking pots for au bain marie melting and a ton of scrap candles, ask people to keep them aside for you.

a herbarium, flower pressing: Leaves are free, wildflowers too, ask if you can take from peoples gardens.

puzzles: thrift stores, your grandma probably

Citizen science: look for projects in your area or get the iNaturalist app

And lastly and most importantly: Share! Share your supllies, share your knowledge. Surround yourself with other creative people and before you know it someone will give you a pot of homemade jam and when you want to paint your kabinet someone will have leftover paint in just the right color and you can give them a homemade candle in return and everyone is having fun and building skills and friendships and not a cent is exchanged. We have always lived like this, it's what humans are build to do.

And all of it sure beats sitting behind a computer going "No stranger, I refuse to let myself have a good time."

Anyway I'm logging off bc I'm making some badges for a friend who cooked for me and then I'm going to fix some holes in everyones clothes.

[fitgothgirl]

Birdwatching - download a free app for identifying and/or logging and go for walks or hikes or just sit in your yard/at your window depending on where you live. (My biologist friend uses the Merlin Bird ID app for identifying and eBird for logging, so that’s what I got now that I’m getting into it. These apps are associated btw, both by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology). A cheap/basic pair of binoculars helps too.

Crosswords and other word puzzles - lots of free sites

Learn a language - Duolingo is free, among other apps

Photography - Most people have smartphones these days that actually have decent enough cameras that could suffice for beginners and intermediates - the important part is your eye and the composition, etc. Plus there are free Photoshop-like sites for editing, like pixlr.com. Also you can find old, great quality DSLRs that still work for cheap! They’re not like cell phones lol; my Canon is almost 20 years old and works like a charm. And good ol' YouTube University can give you beginner lessons if you don't know what to look for or how to get started.

Journaling (and/or bullet journaling)

Read lyrics along with songs while listening to them. If you don’t have Spotify, there are tons of free lyric websites out there.

Research an unfamiliar topic either online at home or at the library.

Also for any hobby or just life, there's always the Buy Nothing Project and freecycle and Trash Nothing where people exchange things rather than throwing away stuff they don't need!

[firespirited]

There are a couple of things I'd like to add as someone poor in supplies and in time/energy:

Yes it takes more effort and practice to get a nice looking result with janky materials and there's a learning curve about what supplies are actually a waste of your time.

Yes it's harder to be motivated when you aren't part of a group or the people you intended to follow in a hobby have the nice supplies.

Yes it's harder to find tutorials that are rewarding when you're not using the supplies they have or try to sell you.

It's kind of like learning to enjoy going to a movie alone or learning a skill outside of a class or group: learning to enjoy learning, to embrace your mediocre first attempts, not see practice pieces as wasted time, getting motivated for yourself alone... it's a skill, it's an exercise in patience (in endurance even, for restless folks like me). But that's also part of the fun: the challenge.

My biggest advice is to embrace that you're going to make ugly things for a while but you're also going to have more intuitive, inventive skills than the folks with the nice supplies. Someday soon you're going to be the one who can do clever fixes, recycling and point out to newbies why and how they're messing up because you've been there.

The other super important advice is to find where the other people making janky beginner things are and join them.

Instagram, tiktok and youtube will recommend product photography level videos of high skill with high end supplies. Avoid at all costs!!

It takes quite a bit of scrolling or finding one hobbiest on your level to follow and follow who they follow so I like to go to deviantart first and try and find folks on tumblr next (and crafting for kids/teens blogs) . For example: on deviantart they'll have a low res step by step photo montage tutorial and you'll get to see the unprofessional looking item they made and you won't feel bad because that was an honest time when people put their ugly work up and you can see how they became really good at it a few years later.

[I am learning how to crochet. I'm dyspraxic and can't think in 3d. It's been a week doing a few hours a day: I've done more than a dozen mini samplers with this 3yd piece of just right yarn, taken a photo then pulled it apart. When I can do neat rows and a better coordination for tension, I'll go find a simple thing to make on deviantart or a beginners crochet book on the internet archive library. There has been no dopamine rush, there have been a series of downers and *that* is where the power of spite kicks in.

I know 5 stitches, I *will* get their tension right and then I *will* make a thing and it might take a practice piece or two but that thing will give me my dopamine rush. And if crochet isn't my jam after that I'll try something else or go back to something practiced to the point of making satisfying things.]

Another option is to look at homemade gift lists from craft blogs (past and present) and see if there's anything in your current supplies, recycling, ingredients that you could practice. (I had some felt, cardboard and beads and a single bead needle so I learned to make beaded brooches as seasonal gifts. Following fancy tutorials for the techniques but making my own thing.) Hand made gifts can be a way of easing into a hobby with a specific thing to make in a small time crunch (and you don't have to give it to someone who won't appreciate the work, you can do it for you).

[ginkasei]

list of things that will always get my goat

-el chupacabra

[ginkasei]

-the swedish, depending on the year 🔥

[3bagshotrow]

middle-earth dashboard simulator

🏵 hobbitc0re Follow

pippin was 29 years old???

🏵 hobbitc0re Follow

he should've been at the green dragon

( 420 notes )

📸 daily-middle-earth-photos Follow

#gates of argonath #argonath #amon hen #middle earth landscapes #photographers of middle earth #travel #dark academia #lmao pls reblog this i almost fell out of my boat taking this photo

( 79 notes )

🦢 elfposting Follow

my hungry ass could never travel with lembas

( 9,839 notes )

🐟 sojuicysweet Follow

.

#the entitlement i see on this site sometimes is disgusting #y'all will just post about having easy access to lembas when we can't eats hobbit food??? #we must starve??? #vent #do not rb

( 3 notes )

🗡 shieldmaiden Follow

CALLOUT FOR GRIMA WORMTONGUE

I've talked a lot about this already on this blog, but I want to have everything collected in one post so next time some dipshit with a white hand icon slides into my inbox to call me a liar I can just link to this post. tl;dr grima wormtongue has been poisoning my uncle and the land of rohan for the past few years, and here are the receipts:

Keep reading

( 38 notes )

🧙‍♂️ bignaturals Follow

i stg if one more of you tells me I should've sent frodo on the eagles I'm asking iluvatar to take me back

( 1,930 notes )

📖 booknerdofbree Follow

recent read: there and back again: a hobbit's tale by bilbo baggins

I thought this was SOOO fun and cute! I'm usually not into rpf but did anyone else think there was something between bilbo and thorin? 👀 I can't be the only one who saw it. but the ending made me cry my eyes out.

4.5/5 stars

#booklr #there and back again #bilbo baggins #recent read #dark academia #light academia #book review

( 12 notes )

🌲 elvenking69 Follow

who up mirking they wood

( 58,274 notes )

🐛 manofsirith Follow

wtf the new king of gondor just bowed to these four random short guys?? everyone else bowed too and I just went along with it lmao 😅 am I missing something????

#this is right after he sang a song and made out with some hot elf chick #truly the wildest coronation i've ever been to

( 85 notes )

🥵 firstagebaddiebracket Follow

ULTIMATE HOTTEST FIRST AGE BADDIE TOURNAMENT FINALS!!!!

Galadriel VS Luthien

Galadriel

Luthien

Voting ended onDec 2, 2023

🔘 haldir-deactivated30190303

here y'all go again pitting two bad bitches against each other

🌀 aragornsbigtoe Follow

🌊 helcaraxebaby Follow

everyone who voted galadriel is a kinslayer apologist #luthiensweep

( 4,271 notes )

🔥 beaconboi Follow

fuck my job so much. everyone manifest an attack on gondor so I can finally warm my fingers on this beacon fire.

🔥 beaconboi Follow

by eru this can't be happening

( 38,386 notes )

[spandexinspace]

I need everyone to know that the ship Götheborg, the world's largest ocean-going wooden sailing ship, answered a distress call the other day.

Imagine waiting for the coast guard or whatever to show up and instead a replica of 18th century merchant ship pulls up and tows you to the coast.

[foxgirlofficial]

pov: you’ve been transported to the 17th century

[uvradical]

#in the article it says that the sailboat sailors were concerned because they could not be towed quickly because of the kind of boat#so they asked Götheborg what type of ship they were and warned that they would not be able to go above a certain speed#and götheborg went ' we are also a sailboat. 50 meters length. no worries :) '#and the poor sailboat sailors were just like ' That's not possible. they have to be messing with us' and then the ship Rolled Up (via bunjywunjy)

[ms-demeanor]

I'm crying. Here's a photo of a sailor from the Götheborg watching over the little sailboat in tow:

From the story:

We repeatedly emphasized that we were aboard a small 8-meter sailboat, but the response was the same each time: "We are a 50-meter three-masted sailboat, and we offer our assistance in towing you to Paimpol." We were perplexed by the size difference between our two boats, as we feared being towed by a boat that was too large and at too fast a speed that could damage our boat. The arrival of the Götheborg on the scene was rapid and surprising, as we did not expect to see a merchant ship from the East India Company of the XVIII century. This moment was very strange, and we wondered if we were dreaming. Where were we? What time period was it? The Götheborg approached very close to us to throw the line and pass a large rope. The mooring went well, and our destinies were linked for very long hours, during which we shared the same radio frequency to communicate with each other. The crew of the Götheborg showed great professionalism and kindness towards us. They adapted their speed to the size of our boat and the weather conditions. We felt accompanied by very professional sailors. Every hour, the officer on duty of the Götheborg called us to ensure everything was going well.[...] This adventure, very real, was an incredible experience for us. We were extremely lucky to cross paths with the Götheborg by chance and especially to meet such a caring crew. Dear commander and crew of the Götheborg, your kindness, and generosity have shown that your ship is much more than just a boat. It embodies the noblest values of the sea, and we are honored to have had the chance to cross your path and benefit from your help.

"Our destinies were linked for very long hours" is just knocking me out.

[animentality]

[leebrontide]

One time my dad came to family dinner all excited “you know that show Sherlock? I hear fans are writing whole new stories for it online”

And in perfect unison my sister and I yelled “DAD NO!” So vehemently he stopped in his tracks.

Then a look of dawning comprehension on his face.

“Oh, this is like Kirk and Spock, isn’t it”

And I died right then and there.

[riahchan]

my dad is 72 and has been reading fanfic for over 20 years

every once in a while, someone will say something and we have a "What were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament?" moment

[just-french-me-up]

Are you alright, honey? You've barely put your blorbo in situations

[nealashitposts]

Okay but back when I could afford a therapy my psychiatrist asked if I had written any fanfiction or planned any out in my head, and I was "nah, not really." And she nodded and looked down at her notes and was like "so how do you feel about possibly trying Zoloft?"

I started laughing and she was like "I know it sounds funny but it's been six months without you engaging in your favorite hobby and that's a sign the depression is getting to a point where we might why try some treatments with meds in addition to therapy."

So like. yeah.

[ruffboi-mags]

So, babe, ARE you okay? You've barely put your blorbo in situations

[foreverdawn]

The first thing I did after going back on meds was sit down and write 700+ pages of various fics and fic ideas over the course of a month.

[elucubrare]

i think one of the reasons i get mildly annoyed about worldbuilding threads that are 200 tweets of why you should care about where blue dye comes from in your world before saying someone is wearing blue is that so few of them go up to the second level of "and that should impact your characters somehow" - i don't care that blue dye comes from pressing berries that only grow in one kingdom a thousand miles away if people are casually wearing blue

[elucubrare]

a couple of people reblogged this so i was thinking about it again (ok i'm almost always thinking about material culture worldbuilding tbh) & a lot of my problem is that these kinds of worldbuilding threads and posts treat it like an obligation and not an oppurtunity --

"blue dye is rare" is a world fact that could be a plot obstacle (character is a dyer and needs blue cloth, of the right shade, for a festival); a clue (main character notices someone wearing blue and realizes that they're in disguise); a way to inform character (main character sees a blue banner and thinks its owner is showing off); and any number of other things, from small to large.

and if the rarity doesn't serve any of those functions in your story, then the existence of blue dye is not important enough that you, as the author, need to consider it.

i'm a trends and forces guy - i believe any given worldstate is created by billions of coinflips leading up to that moment, some random (the sun rose on the day of the battle and gave one side victory) and some more directed (a law was enacted with a specific intent). expecting, as an author, to have generated a worldstate that coheres and connects in the same way and with the same complexity as ours is going to lead to paralysis more often than it is to interesting worldbuilding, or worldbuilding that supports the story you're trying to tell.

[the-overthinktank]

Part of the problem here is a culture clash between hobbyist worldbuilders and worldbuilding authors. Some folks just like to tinker with worldbuilding with no overarching goal because they like to have a complex creative project, and get annoyed when authors give them advice telling them they need to focus on story creation. And other folks are worldbuilding in service of a story and get annoyed when hobbyists tell them they should explain fiddly details that are unnecessary to making a compelling narrative.

[mikkeneko]

I've seen a couple of different posts about this topic, and a couple of different branches of this post, most of which are capped by someone going "No, you don't understand, you HAVE to be accurate and have a full understanding of the implications of THIS topic, because it's REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT guys, it's the one thing you MUST understand in how it has shaped history and society," followed by a 5k word essay about the particulars of this specific topic and its history and its implications when building the world. Grass. Fabric. Food. Language. Medical care. Hotels and hospitality.

The problem is that everyone thinks that their topic is the one that's Really Important And Must Not Be Overlooked, but there are -- that is literally all of topics. Absolutely everything that makes up our world today took thousands (at least) of years of wildly tumultuous evolution before they took on the shapes of things that we recognize around us. Everything. The world is fractal and complicated, and the more you go looking the more you will find, all the way back to the beginning.

Have you ever heard the phrase "if you want to bake an apple pie, you must first invent the universe?" Why are we making inventing the universe a prerequisite for being able to make art?

Personally I think it's unreasonable to expect every person writing a story -- at every level, from self-indulgent hobbyists to published novels -- to have an expert's understanding of every single topic. Even if you did there isn't going to be room to stop and explain the import of every single topic to your setting and story. Even Victor Hugo or Jean Auel confined their inventing-the-universe exposition to a pretty narrow range of topics, and specifically, the topics that interested them.

I think a writer should expound on the things they think are pretty cool, and if the audience learns a thing thereby, that's great, but it cannot be a requirement.

[dtacore]

[daughter-of-sapph0]

op link the fucking article

[dtacore]

https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football enjoy reading about football :)

What football will look like in the future

Something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong.

[daughter-of-sapph0]

thanks. what the fuck

[brainstatic]

Everyone’s like “those Germans have a word for everything” but English has a word for tricking someone into watching the music video for Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.

[queenrinacat]

English has a lot more words created for very specific phenomena! It’s not just rick-rolling. Language is always evolving and it’s super interesting! Here’s a list of hyper-specific/untranslatable words in English.

[edweeirdo]

Some of these are fucking wild.

[gimmick-blog-detector]

Huh, gonna start using these some of them are pretty fuckin funny

[7kqe3j9fzdwm-deactivated2025110]

number six lmaoo

[transgothzoey]

I love weird linguistics stuff like this~ I frequently use my weird love for Autological words as an icebreaker so I like having more “English is weird” stuff to gush over :3

[daily-prompts]

I need everyone’s best character advice. STAT.

[theidealistcynic-deactivated202]

You're not creating real people, you're creating the illusion of real people. You don't have to mention their favorite food if it doesn't come up, you don't even have to know it, though if they were actual people they'd have one. You can throw plot events at your characters to force them to take certain actions, or you could just rewrite the characters to be the kind of characters who would take those actions anyway. Your characters have a life of their own in their own little world, but don't be afraid to play god to get what you want out of them.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

In the vast majority of cases, a character's strengths and flaws should be the same thing. There are exceptions (you can have a character be clumsy for the lols without needing to find some way that it's an advantage), but for most character traits, the difference between a flaw and a strength is the situation at hand and learning when to indulge it.

[roach-works]

desire is the source of action, so your characters should WANT things. all of them should have something they want that's good for them, something they want that's bad for them, and something that's just a little silly, for spice.

[melongumi]

A key thing it's good to know about your characters is the difference between what they know and feel... and what they SAY. What they choose not to say, what they want to say but can't bear to, and -- perhaps most importantly -- how what they think they've said doesn't match up with what they've actually communicated to their interlocutors. Different people will fail to communicate in different ways. The causes and relative frequency of their particular failures can become load-bearing if you do it right. Beyond communication, the gap between intention and executed action is the same way.

[funnytwittertweets]

[thenightgaunt]

I ran an Aliens rpg years back. But the players didn't KNOW it was an Aliens game until halfway through the first session.

They thought it was a sci-fi game but they also thought the monsters were going to be zombies.

Over a period of 2 hours they then proceeded to make EVERY Aliens movie cliche "mistake" known to man. Because at the time they all made sense.

The characters in a story don't know they're in a story or what kind of story it is.

They might think their in a romcom instead of a slasher movie. And if you're not in a slasher movie, why the fuck would you search through every closet in your house just because a cup mysteriously fell off a table in the dining room?

[theodysseyofhomer]

every time someone says odysseus “just” loves his wife or “just” wants to go home, i get so agitated… you don’t understand. odysseus wants everything. he wants to be at home, and he wants to be a hero. he wants to die, and he wants to live. he wants his family, and he wants to lie to them. he wants to tell the story of his life, and he wants to keep his secrets. he wants to go back and for everything to be as it was, and he wants the glory and wealth and reputation he hard-won. he wants to be at peace, and he wants to do violence. he wants to sail past the sirens safely, and he wants to hear them. he wants the war to end, and he wants it to mean something. he wants to have his cake and eat it too. he’s the man of many ways. he’ll get his damn homecoming but he’s a rube goldberg machine. he doesn’t “just” anything.

[saul-tortellini]

[hamletthedane]

100% Disagree

It’s an underdog story about classism in which the folk hero (Johnny) is confronted by a powerful man (the Devil) who tries to exploit the hero’s perceived ignorance and inferiority by offering a great reward with impossible odds. Although Johnny warns him that looks can be deceiving, and that he’s going to regret the dare because Johnny is the “best there’s ever been”, the devil is blinded by his greed and arrogance.

The devil creates an awful cacophony of technically excellent fiddle playing that would be impossible for Johnny to replicate. It’s a trick.

But Johnny just grins at him and starts to play “simple” classic country fiddling songs - Fire On The Mountain, House Of The Rising Sun, and Daddy Cut Her Bill Off. He doesn’t rise to beat the Devil - he simply creates his own music from his home, in the style that he knows, and his love of it and the familiarity of the music make his “backwoods” fiddling more perfect than the Devil could ever achieve.

It is thus the devil’s pride, not Johnny’s, that allows Johnny to Bugs Bunny his way into a golden fiddle.

(In that sense, I do agree that it is the most American song: in a land of prejudice and inequities, great power lies - dormant but ever-present - in those we underestimate and attempt to exploit.)

[cumaeansibyl]

Also people initially react to the devil's part like "holy shit that's badass" because he's got electric guitar and bass and a whole backing band to make him sound good. Of course he sounds amazing. But if you drill down to the actual fiddling -- and this is straight from Charlie Daniels -- it's not as technically difficult as what Johnny does. It's fast? But it's mostly just going up and down scales.

Here's a good performance -- the devil's part starts around 2:00. Check out how long Daniels just stands there holding his fiddle while the guitar and piano carry the weight. I love that piano bassline but fiddling it ain't.

It's still an American narrative: if you can afford to hire a bunch of more talented people, you, too, can look like a genius. Doesn't make you one.

[wintersoldierfell]

Of all the redemption arcs in popular fantasy media, I feel like Theoden's in The Lord of the Rings is the most overlooked.

The movies emphasize the magical control that the evil powers exercise over Theoden, but in the books, it's more obviously a depiction of bad kingship, in the British medieval sense. Theoden takes bad advice; he neglects his family; he fails to reward his knights; and he leaves his people vulnerable to attack. He also does not honor his kingdom's promises to help nearby kingdoms, as we can tell from Boromir's account of what Gondor has been going through.

Gandalf doesn't just cast out the curse and magically fix everything. He encourages Theoden to free himself from his bad advisor, but Theoden has to take all the subsequent steps. And those choices are not easy; after so much neglect, his knights are scattered, and his only option for defending his people is to gather them at Helm's Deep. The siege does not go well. His people are afraid and despairing. But nevertheless, he holds firm and charges out to meet the enemy -- and Gandalf literally meets him halfway, bringing with him the lost knights, whom Theoden welcomes and rewards after the battle.

Theoden could have just gone home after that. But when Gondor calls for aid, Theoden proves his worth by honoring his promises. He keeps his oaths not only to his people but to his allies.

And the climax of his redemption in the book is not his death, but his leadership. The ride of the Rohirrim against Sauron's armies is described in lavish detail, with an uncharacteristically heated pace: Theoden leads the entire line of Rohan, his banner streaming behind him in the wind as they race toward their foe. And that's the end of the chapter.

I love Theoden's arc so much, and especially that moment so much, because the message is not that he has to win battles or seek power. He just has to keep fighting. Theoden's greatest enemy isn't really Sauron: it's despair. And over the course of the book, he keeps choosing hope and action over despair and hesitation, until finally he can lead his people with courage.

As someone who struggles a lot with despair, I really needed to hear that story.

[mikkeneko]

and it’s contrasted against Denethor’s arc; who also struggles against despair, and doesn’t overcome it.

[the-other-anaander]

yooooo. so I literally wrote a 20 page english paper about the Hope/Despair theme in Tolkien’s work once. It was like ten years ago and I don’t think I have it anymore, but oh boy do I have feeeeeeelings about this topic. And I have drunk a little bit of wine tonight! So here are my unasked for thoughts:

Yes, Theoden’s greatest enemy is despair! Everyone’s greatest enemy is despair. It’s the biggest fucking theme of the series IMO and it makes me crazy how often it gets overlooked.

lord of the rings is a story written by a man whose experience of war was crouching in the bottom of a trench. People like to make a lot of hay about the charge of the light brigade and it’s similarity to the ride of the rohirrim, but no. Tolkien’s experience of war was getting fucking trench fever, not watching cavalry charges. Tolkien’s experience of war was listening to the shells fall around him, knowing that death could come at any moment. He experienced war in a way where the soldiers on the other side of the line were a faceless threat, and the closest and most present enemy was his own fear.

this is the hill I will die on. This is why I hate it when people talk about LotR as a morally cowardly story about fighting mindless orcs that exist to be cannon fodder. No. Lord of the Rings is about seeing the dark coming on the horizon, and fighting yourself. Fighting the fear and despair that rise up inside you. Struggling with your own terror and powerlessness, knowing that you are small, and nothing you do will matter in the face of this massive conflict—  you’re just here, one more meaningless soul to feed into the machine guns. Lord of the Rings is about taking a deep breath, and bracing yourself, and deciding that if nothing you do matters, all that matters is how you do it. The ring can’t possibly be destroyed— we choose to form a fellowship anyway. Helms deep will surely fall by morning— we still choose to fight. The quest can’t possibly succeed— and yet we choose to march into the teeth of mordor to distract the enemy. It’s not hope, exactly? But’s it’s not not hope.

I did at one point have twenty pages written about this. Tolkien was a deeply christian man— he believed in eucatastrophe. Salvation. A better world to come, after suffering, if you bore your suffering well. But he was also a world-class Beowulf scholar with a kinda viking-warrior-type view of the world. And do you know what the vikings believed? (Pls don’t anybody @ me for saying viking, I know it’s a verb and not a culture). The vikings believed that the time of your death was preordained, and that all you had control over was how you met it.

And that is some seriously Rohirric shit!! Like, we’re all mortals doomed to die, Ragnarok is coming, and this whole world is an inevitable grind down into oblivion… but if we’re fighting a long defeat, all the more reason to fight it gloriously!! That’s epic. Eomer approves the hell out of that message.

I’m gonna be a real nerd now, and quote from a poem called the Battle of Maldon.

“Courage shall grow keener, clearer our will,

More valiant our spirits, as our strength grows less.

Here lies our good lord, all leveled in dust

The man all marred. True kinsman will mourn

Who thinks to wend off from battle play now?

Though whitened by winters I will not away,

But lodge by my liege lord that favorite of men;

By my dear one and ring giver intend I to lie.”

That’s a translation from an Old English poem that’s literally a thousand years old, but it always gets me how much it sounds like something Tolkien would write. Theoden and Eowyn are practically leaping out of that poem: We’re all going to die, I choose to meet my end fiercely. We’re all going to die, so I want to die beside my king.

It’s an acceptance of death, and even of failure, but not of defeat. Because— to get back to what I was talking about earlier— Lord of the Rings isn’t actually a story about battlefields. It’s a story about being at war with your own heart. Despair or faith? Hope or defeat? Tolkien wants you to know that even if your city is overrun by orcs, or you’re killed in a meaningless push for another 50 feet of french mud, you can still hold on to your courage with both hands and not cede up your soul to despair-- and that’s the battle Tolkien thinks is really worth writing about.

It’s a battle that every major character in the story fights. Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Theoden, Denethor, Merry, Pippin, Boromir, Galadriel, Eowyn, Faramir, Eomer, Saruman, Gollum, Aragorn. Some of them hold onto hope through everything. Some of them break utterly. Some of them are defeated, and then with help find their footing again, and make a redeeming last stand.  

But the point that Tolkien hammers home again and again is: Death and failure are natural parts of life, and should be accepted. Despair shouldn’t be.

Tolkien says: hope is hard, actually. Fuck that Game of Thrones grimdark bullshit. Hope is hard fucking work. And even if you don’t have hope? Fight like you do. Because the world needs people working to make it better. Do the best you can with what you have, and whether you can see the mark you’re making on the world or not, the simple fact that you’re trying means the world is a better place.

Anyway, I fucking love these books. I am going to stop drinking wine, and go to bed now. :)

[prokopetz]

I'll be honest, as much as I grump about sloppy worldbuilding, I'm actually kind of fascinated with the way RPG settings reduce things to pure iconography, entirely divorced from any cultural referents. I love it when a fantasy religion manages to develop 13th Century French Catholic trappings even though their object of veneration is a dragon from outer space. I love it when the village doctor is just inexplicably wearing a long beaked mask and black linen robe 24/7 and nobody ever acknowledges that this is weird.

[prokopetz]

"Well ACTUALLY fantasy cultures are made up, so they can look like whatever you want" yes, thank you for that keen observation, but that's not the incongruity I'm gesturing toward.

In brief, the aesthetic particulars of cultural expressions may be more or less arbitrary, but the material conditions that produce them are not. While there are many imaginable paths to any given end, whatever you end up with can't help but imply things about the material conditions that gave rise to it.

To pose a simple example, architecture made of wood implies the existence of trees, even if you never show a tree "on camera" – and if you explicitly establish that your setting doesn't have trees in it, people are going to wonder where the wood came from!

Let's bring it back around to the second example in the initial post: the plague doctor costume. Sure, some of the aesthetic particulars are arbitrary – the mask didn't have to be shaped like a beak, and the linen didn't have to be black – but the overall form of the costume emerges from the need to fulfill a particular function: it's basically the 17th Century equivalent of a biohazard suit.

Depicting a doctor in your fantasy setting sporting a plague doctor costume as casualwear is the equivalent of depicting a doctor in a contemporary or near-future setting casually wearing one of these:

Naturally, this doesn't oblige your fantasy setting to adhere to any of the real-world particulars of how our world's plague doctor costume came about, but function that costume performs unavoidably implies the existence of some reason for it to be socially acceptable for a doctor in your setting to wear a hazmat suit to dinner.

And that's the fun part for me: digging into all the things the author didn't realise they were implying about the material conditions of their setting because they were treating this stuff as purely iconographic.

Was the author thinking about what they were implying about the material conditions of their setting by establishing that it's socially acceptable for a doctor to wear a biohazard suit 24/7?

Probably not – they just threw it in because it symbolises doctor-ness.

Am I going to think about what it implies?

You bet I am.

[annabelle--cane]

schrodinger's chekhov's gun. a detail in a story that looks like it should have some big payoff but it's too early to tell if that's relevant or if the author just has a passion for lovingly describing guns.

[fallowsthorn]

schrodinger's chekov's occam's razor: you find an inconsistent or inaccurate detail in a work that would be brilliant if it was foreshadowing a plot twist later on, but it's too early to tell whether the author expects you to be smart, and the simplest explanation is that they fucked up

[magical-agatha]