By God, I'll not lose Hardy!

I love writing and moaning about writing, history, reading, pretty things, cute things, and silly things. This tumblr is a mixed bag of them all! Perpetually stuck in rarepair hell. My fic on AO3. Dreamwidth.

[seali]

[morphmaker]

the silmarillion bride

[xiaq]

One of the best things about being a writer is thinking of something small you can add to your work that’s just. Devastating. Like you’re sitting there going. Oh. That would be diabolical. People would get really riled up about that. Exquisite. Let’s do it.

[dduane]

It's just impossible to describe how delicious that realization is. Especially when you know your editor will approve.

(Though some of us would riposte with "It's even better when you know your editor will NOT approve." ...And this too is true.) 😄

...Writing is such a difficult (and sometimes painful) business that we have to get our small pleasures where we can. 😏

[system-coded-skirmish]

some people are taking "doomed" to mean "dead". this is actually a misconception! you can be doomed even if you don't die! it's sometimes worse if you don't die!

[invader-reggie]

Normalize answering "why do u ship them" questions with "because i felt like it" instead of writing out 200 pages of reasons why you ship it like u r begging for approval. Or give a nonsense answer.

"Why do you ship this??"

On the night of the full moon I dreamt of a talking rabbit who hopped onto my shoulder and whispered in my ear that I should ship these specific characters and I obeyed without question.

[ltwilliammowett]

This need to put a coin under a mast just won’t let me go. It is originally a Roman custom, as the Greeks also did and put the coins under the pillars of a temple when it was built to hope for protection and luck. This is also what the coin under the mast is said to do. However, there is one thing that may also play a role. A silver coin was placed under the tongue or on the eyes of a dead person so that he could pay Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, for his passage. If a ship sank, it was hardly possible to give a coin to the dead and not everyone had a coin directly with them when this happened. What if this coin was not only a good luck charm but also a means of payment for Charon when this happened? I will think about it further and read some books, maybe there is a clue for this thesis….

[verecunda]

Oh! Is this a widespread custom, then? I know I’ve read about a Roman shipwreck in the Thames that was found with a coin in the mast-step, but I didn’t realise it was a common thing. That was the first time I’d ever heard of it.

Interesting theory about it being intended to pay Charon!

[ltwilliammowett]

Oh that was even very common, so far 17 ships have been found with a coin, like this one

Dr. Deborah Carlson has written a very interesting article on this subject,  “Mast‐Step Coins among the Romans”  maybe you want to read more about it.

[archaeos]

If you don’t mind me adding — ships themselves were often held to contain a sort of divine or living spirit, which may possibly connect to this notion of payment for the dead. From Brody, A. 2008, ‘The Specialised Religions of Ancient Mediterranean Seafarers’, Religion Compass, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2008.00079.x:

Evidence for divine spirits imbued in ships is found in diverse sources. There are very few extant Canaanite or Phoenician maritime texts, yet we know from the Ugaritic Kirta epic that the sacred mountain, Mt. Zaphon, was represented as a ship, and a parallel reference from an Egyptian papyrus details that Ba‘l Zaphon was worshipped in the form of a ship (Brody 1998). In later periods, seafarers dedicated ships, or model ships, to Zeus Kasios, Ba‘l Zaphon’s direct Hellenic counterpart, or more generally to Zeus the Savior, Zeus Soter. A letter from the king of Tyre to the king of Ugarit details the sinking of a ship in a storm. This ship is said to have literally died in the tempest, suggesting an animate spirit that perished with the loss of the vessel […] (Wachsmuth 1967; Göttlicher 1981; Brody 1998).

[ltwilliammowett]

Thank you for adding it. This is really a very exciting topic and I had already talked about it with one of my former professors who works a lot in the field of ancient religion. She hasn’t come across it yet either, she also finds my suggestion exciting and now we’re sitting down together to see if there are any research approaches in this area. However, it’s still at the beginning and quite rough, because so far we haven’t found anything in this direction. So now we have to search through ancient texts…

[depsidase]

[cilil]

The thing that the people who get mad about Nienna defending Melkor and other bad people don't understand is that, being the Lady of Mercy, she is quite literally the public defender archangel. She was created and designed to be able to have empathy for literally everyone in existence, so that no one is ever alone without anyone to speak for them.

And for those who get mad at public defenders and defense attorneys I will also point out that it's absolutely vital for having a state under the rule of law that respects human rights and is not run on the whims and good (or ill) will of those in power that even the worst person imaginable has someone defending them in court.

Similarly, it is vital that someone like Nienna exists. You can probably see now why her close connection to Námo is not a coincidence - he needs her. And why she is counted among the Aratar.

[mhevarujta]

For it is said that even in the Music Nienna took little part, but listened intent to all that she heard. Therefore she was rich in memory, and farsighted, perceiving how the themes should unfold in the Tale of Arda. But she had little mirth, and all her love was mingled with pity, grieving for the harms of the world and for the things that failed of fulfilment. So great was her ruth, it is said, that she could not endure to the end of the Music. Therefore she has not the hope of Manwe. He is more farseeing; but Pity is the heart of Nienna

It's important to note that Nienna's pity and mercy does not come out of ignorance, but out of undestanding. It's a different kind of strength. Of course the idea that she defends Melkor has its roots in a version of the Annals of the Valar in which she, Melkor and Manwe are siblings and Nienna supports Melkor "because of her kinship". But I think it makes sense for her to do so even outside of that familial relationship.

There is a quote by Nienna which does not concern Melkor, but I think it can be used about her stance in many situations:

'In the use of Justice there must be Pity, which is the consideration of the singleness of each that cometh under Justice."

Nienna's mercy alone is at times excessive. She is consumed by it and by her compassion. But the Valar were not created to stand alone. They encompassed different aspects that are all necessary for Eru's great plan to run as smoothly as possible. Nienna's empathy, her grief, her forgiveness, are vital. What would be the alternative? For everything to be left to Mandos' pittiless (with one exception) jurisdiction? The Valar without Nienna would have ended up being more alike to Melkor that they'd ever wish to be.

[da-proti-toku-grem]

from Jan's ig story

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

my toxic writing trait is imagining the scene in my head in long, full cinematic detail and then writing: “they fought. it was intense.”

[a-bungle]

[rosieandthemoon]

ruins of St Andrews Cathedral in Fife, Scotland

[eqqtt]

Come, Frodo. Walk beside me, and let your thoughts find rest

[grayintogreen]

I think what might help the whole "low engagement in fandom spaces driving creatives out because they don't see the point in sharing anything only to get crickets or critics" is not the shaming tone of "look this is how you get nothing, you entitled shits" that tends to be very pervasive, but rather pointing out how actually rewarding it can be to leave nice comments.

I like to leave very long rambling comments on people's fics and that has actually netted me some very real, genuine friendships and we've become cheerleaders for each other. My friend has a D&D Podcast that she doesn't get ANY sort of engagement out of, so I started listening to it at work and livereacting the things I enjoy about it and showing her my investment and it makes her very happy and it makes me happy that she's happy.

Being nice to people... is actually a good enough reason to do things, shockingly enough. You don't have to do it. No one should shame you for not doing it. But it doesn't actually cost anything to make other people happy, especially if they created something that made you happy.

[targetedknowledge]

[malkaleh]

@verecunda a human!halbrand thought before I go out: halbrand standing, blazingly angry in front of a Celebrimbor who has been tortured and taking Sauron out with the sheer fury of These Fucking Hands.

[verecunda]

8DDD

[tlotrgifs]