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And another thing!

Book two read like the author has been yelled at by readers about the rape/dubious consent in book one and is 'fixing' it in this one. I hated that! All the teeth of book one are pulled in book 2.

How are things 'fixed'? Well before the first sex scene of the books it felt like The characters turned to the reader and said "this is consensual sex. Any dub-con sex in the last book is deeply regretted by the male character and also forgiven by the female character. We now begin sexing."

Rinse and repeat with the two additional love interests.

Some criticism for The Sol and Lune book duo I'm reading.

This is a poly-romance with some dub-con elements. Fairly complicated dynamics for a romance/erotica novel (at least in the first book). I found it refreshing and interesting. But I'm a bit of a narrow reader, maybe it's typical of other genres.

Book one : Our heroine is defined by her strong religious conviction to stay in her manor home and provide for the tenants of her land who haven't fled the enemy army. Said army takes over her home and sells off her stuff but doesn't kill anyone. All her actions and in-action is guided by wanting to outlast the army occupying her lands.

Book two: yeah she doesn't super care about that stuff anymore. Like she still loves the people on her land but that religious conviction vanished. Which is odd because SHE'S BEEN FUCKING BLESSED BY THE MOON GODDESS AND HAS SPEED RUN BECOMING A PRIESTESS!! And also has magic powers now.

In book one i found her really interesting and I got why the three love interests were drawn to her. She's a mostly ordinary woman living through a terrible time and trying to make the best of it. She's discovering that she likes sex (a big part of why she puts up with the army for so long) and she has all these emotional attachments to her home and her tenants and her lands. I really liked her, she's captivating in a way that's hard to describe.

Book two she's just The Special now. She the most special and wonderful woman who's ever walked the earth and everyone should love her. Her character is suddenly very bland and one note. She doesn't have anything at stake now. She wants to turn her former home into a temple but she could just pick somewhere else to do that if the war gets too bad. She has no emotional attachments there anymore. She's just kinda there. Every time the love interests talked about how special and amazing she is especially since she's become a priestess, I was just like

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Some criticism for The Sol and Lune book duo I'm reading.

This is a poly-romance with some dub-con elements. Fairly complicated dynamics for a romance/erotica novel (at least in the first book). I found it refreshing and interesting. But I'm a bit of a narrow reader, maybe it's typical of other genres.

Book one : Our heroine is defined by her strong religious conviction to stay in her manor home and provide for the tenants of her land who haven't fled the enemy army. Said army takes over her home and sells off her stuff but doesn't kill anyone. All her actions and in-action is guided by wanting to outlast the army occupying her lands.

Book two: yeah she doesn't super care about that stuff anymore. Like she still loves the people on her land but that religious conviction vanished. Which is odd because SHE'S BEEN FUCKING BLESSED BY THE MOON GODDESS AND HAS SPEED RUN BECOMING A PRIESTESS!! And also has magic powers now.

In book one i found her really interesting and I got why the three love interests were drawn to her. She's a mostly ordinary woman living through a terrible time and trying to make the best of it. She's discovering that she likes sex (a big part of why she puts up with the army for so long) and she has all these emotional attachments to her home and her tenants and her lands. I really liked her, she's captivating in a way that's hard to describe.

Book two she's just The Special now. She the most special and wonderful woman who's ever walked the earth and everyone should love her. Her character is suddenly very bland and one note. She doesn't have anything at stake now. She wants to turn her former home into a temple but she could just pick somewhere else to do that if the war gets too bad. She has no emotional attachments there anymore. She's just kinda there. Every time the love interests talked about how special and amazing she is especially since she's become a priestess, I was just like

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All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings

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i rewatched the lotr films. wondering if arwen felt any pressure for the first 2700 years of her life

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It's a cliché to say that Tolkien's experiences in WWI affected all aspects of his writing, how he wrote about friendship and grief, how he wrote about desolate blasted landscapes. But I wish someone who knows more about Tolkien's military career could help me understand how Tolkien related to retreats. His description of Faramir keeping his people together on the retreat from Osgiliath is one of the best-written sequences in the trilogy, and hardly anyone remembers it. It's about a desperate retreat, and a leader whose presence, whose strength manages to keep it from turning into a rout. There's something very vivid in the descriptions: don't break formation, don't start running or they'll pick you off one by one, keep together, keep moving, hold all of that fear at bay. Tolkien describes that retreat as genuinely heroic, a superhuman act of will, one that exhausts Faramir almost to death, and Denethor still does not accept it as heroic because it's a retreat. It saved men but it lost territory, therefore in his eyes it's a failure.

Tolkien has strong opinions about heroic retreats, in the Silmarillion he sometimes gives the retreat-through-the-dangerous-wilderness plotline to female characters (Emeldir, Idril), he always writes them with respect. Sometimes, getting out of there and keeping most of your people alive is a great act of valour. I feel like he must have had a personal experience about what it means to retreat, and what it means to hold a retreat together, and what it means to get no thanks for it.

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treebeard and the hobbits

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“There are many magic rings in this world, Bilbo Baggins, and none of them should be used lightly.”

-Gandalf the Grey, wielder of Narya the Ring of Fire and also coincidentally maker of the best magic fireworks in the world

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you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

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I have never once wished for Tolkien to still be alive as much as I do in this moment

(Some more clips)

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I'm reading the Iliad for the first time and today 3 different people have asked me what I'm reading. Normally between 0 and 1 person will ask me what book I'm reading unprompted(aka without seeing the cover and thinking it's pretty) Two thoughts about this.

1. what if the Iliad has some kind of supernatural draw to it and that's why it's lasted so long 🤔?(it's good so far but is it better than any other thing? Idk this isn't my usual genre) because I haven't had this many people ask me what I'm reading since I was a booknerd tween bringing books to parties and theater shows.

2. It's so satisfying to just be able to say a title of what I'm reading and not need to do a summary of the book because WE ALL ALREADY KNOW THIS ONE! Or at least have heard of it or parts of it. (I just have to explain why I'm reading it {No, not for school I'm just curious as to what it's like [partially because I finished Kaos and realized I've never read grown-up versions of greek myths and literature so figured I'd start here 乁⁠[⁠ ⁠◕⁠ ⁠ᴥ⁠ ⁠◕⁠ ⁠]⁠ㄏ]})

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Also: I think Aragorn gets a bad reputation now because so many lesser franchises have tried to imitate his archetype without understanding why he works. In the original movies he’s just a big gentle sad guy with a sword, who knows he’s not the real hero of the story and dedicates himself to supporting those gay little hobbits. The aragorn knockoffs are not his fault

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I think part of why I can’t get into any Tolkien stuff outside of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is because I immediately lose interest once the gay little hobbits stop being center-stage. “The main hero is CeleFinElfidor the Bold, an immortal warrior who slew three thousand balrogs with a song” makes me go to sleep. but “his name was Blorbo Boffin and his neighbors said he was a queer creature who liked to eat strawberries” is Intriguing. Instantly you’re invested. You immediately see the vision

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Carolina Elizabeth, Later November Roses

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It's funny how I do love the little stories and things on Tumblr....but when i run into that style in an actual romance novel all i can think is "Wow . This writer spent way too much time on Tumblr and not enough time on learning to write in a cohesive tone." But then again I've read a bunch of stuff here that know is you set your story in the olden days. Your characters shouldn't say shit like"Pick up the content clues" "climb him like a tree" or "let's have a healthy conversation"

It just jolts me right out of an otherwise kinda good book.

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okay but dwarves put SO much effort into their tombs already, carving perfect stone and inscriptions and making records to bury kin with kin and everything, let alone for Gimli son of Gloin Lord of the Glittering Caves.

The years of planning and amounts of paperwork and arrangements for the tomb of Gimli son of Gloin Lord of the Glittering Caves one of the Nine of the Fellowship one of the Heroes of Arda the Elf-friend and sturdy and possessor of the three hairs of Galadriel would be IMMENSE

and then Legolas rocks up in Gimli’s final days of life like: ok so I built this boat