#about the blog structure

[anghraine]

Hi! Can you explain what really the power of foresight was with Faramir? I read the books earlier this year and I don't really quite understand it. He could predict the future? Like he would see it in his dreams? But how did he found out from Gollum that he was taking frodo and sam to cirith ungol and that he had committed murder before?

No problem, it's one of my favorite topics!

The concise explanation: I think Faramir's foresight/aftersight in terms of visions is a largely separate "power" from his ability to bring his strength of mind and will to bear on other people and animals, and to resist outside influence. The visions seem more a matter of broad sensitivity, something Faramir doesn't appear to have much if any control over. The second power is (in our terms) essentially a form of direct telepathy, limited in some ways but still very powerful, and I think this second ability is what Faramir is using with Gollum.

The really long version:

In my opinion, Faramir (or Denethor, Aragorn, etc) doesn't necessarily read thoughts like a book, particularly not with a mind as resistant as Gollum's. Faramir describes Gollum's mind in particular as dark and closed, it seems unusually so—

"There are locked doors and closed windows in your mind, and dark rooms behind them," said Faramir.

Still, Gollum is unable to entirely block Faramir's abilities. In LOTR, it does not seem that Gollum can fully block powerful mental abilities such as Faramir's, though his toughness and hostility does limit what Faramir can see. (Unfinished Tales, incidentally, suggests iirc that Denethor's combination of "great mental powers" and his right to use the Anor-stone allowed him to telepathically get the better of Saruman through their palantíri, a similar but greater feat.) I imagine that this is roughly similar to, but scaled down from, Galadriel's telepathic inquiries of even someone as reluctant to have her in his mind as Boromir, given that Faramir is able to still see some things in Gollum's mind, if with more difficulty than usual.

(WRT Boromir ... ngl, if I was the human buffer between Denethor and Faramir, I would also not be thrilled about sudden telepathic intrusions from basically anyone, much less someone I had little reason to trust.)

Disclaimer: a few years after LOTR's publication, Tolkien tried to systematize how this vague mystical telepathy stuff really works. One idea he had among many, iirc, was that no unwilling person's mind could be "read" the ways that Gollum's is throughout LOTR. IMO that can't really be reconciled w/ numerous significant interactions in LOTR where resistance to mental intrusion or domination is clearly variable between individuals and affected by personal qualities like strength of will, basic resilience, the effort put into opposition, supernatural powers, etc. And these attempts at resistance are unsuccessful or only partially successful on many occasions in LOTR (the Mouth of Sauron, for one example, is a Númenórean sorcerer in the book who can't really contend with Aragorn on a telepathic level). So I, personally, tend to avoid using the terminology and rationales from that later systematized explanation when discussing LOTR. And in general, I think Tolkien's later attempts to convert the mystical, mysterious wonder of Middle-earth into something more "hard magic" or even scientific was a failed idea on a par with Teleporno. Others differ!

In any case, when Gollum "unwillingly" looks at Faramir while being questioned, the creepy light drains from his eyes and he shrinks back while Faramir concludes he's being honest on that specific occasion. Gollum experiences physical pain when he does try to lie to Faramir—

"It is called Cirith Ungol." Gollum hissed sharply and began muttering to himself. "Is not that its name?" said Faramir turning to him. "No!" said Gollum, and then he squealed, as if something had stabbed him.

I don't think this is a deliberate punishment from Faramir—that wouldn't be like him at all—and I don't think it's the Ring, but simply a natural consequence of what Faramir is. Later, Gandalf says of Faramir's father:

"He can perceive, if he bends his will thither, much of what is passing in the minds of men ... It is difficult to deceive him, and dangerous to try."

So, IMO, Faramir's quick realization that Gollum is a murderer doesn't come from any vision of the future or past involving Gollum—that is, it's not a deduction from some event he's seen. Faramir does not literally foresee Gollum's trick at Cirith Ungol. His warning would be more specific in that case, I think. What he sees seems to be less detailed but more direct and, well, mystical. Faramir likely doesn't know who exactly Gollum murdered or why or what any of the circumstances were. Rather, Gollum's murderousness and malice are visible conditions of his soul to Faramir's sight. Faramir doesn't foresee the particulars of Gollum's betrayal—but he can see in Gollum's mind that he is keeping something back. Faramir says of Gollum:

"I do not think you are holden to go to Cirith Ungol, of which he has told you less than he knows. That much I perceived clearly in his mind."

Meanwhile, in a letter written shortly before the publication of LOTR, Tolkien said of Faramir's ancestors:

They became thus in appearance, and even in powers of mind, hardly distinguishable from the Elves

So these abilities aren't that strange in that context. Faramir by chance (or "chance") is, like his father, almost purely an ancient Númenórean type despite living millennia after the destruction of Númenor (that destruction is the main reason "Númenóreanness" is fading throughout the age Faramir lives in). Even less ultra-Númenórean members of Denethor's family are still consistently inheriting characteristics from their distant ancestor Elros, Elrond's brother, while Faramir and Denethor independently strike Sam and Pippin as peculiarly akin to Gandalf, a literal Maia like their ancestress Melian:

“Ah well, sir,” said Sam, “you [Faramir] said my master had an elvish air; and that was good and true. But I can say this: you have an air too, sir, that reminds me of, of—well, Gandalf, of wizards.”

He [Denethor] turned his dark eyes on Gandalf, and now Pippin saw a likeness between the two, and he felt the strain between them, almost as if he saw a line of smouldering fire drawn from eye to eye, that might suddenly burst into flame.

Meanwhile, Faramir's mother's family is believed to be part Elvish, a belief immediately confirmed when Legolas meets Faramir's maternal uncle:

At length they came to the Prince Imrahil, and Legolas looked at him and bowed low; for he saw that here indeed was one who had elven-blood in his veins. "Hail, lord!" he [Legolas] said. "It is long since the people of Nimrodel left the woodlands of Lórien, and yet still one may see that not all sailed from Amroth’s haven west over water."

In addition to that, Faramir's men believe he's under some specific personal blessing or charm as well as the Númenórean/Elvish/Maia throwback qualities. It's also mentioned by different groups of soldiers that Faramir can exercise some power of command over animals as well as people. Beregond describes Faramir getting his horse to run towards five Nazgûl in real time:

"They will make the Gate. No! the horses are running mad. Look! the men are thrown; they are running on foot. No, one is still up, but he rides back to the others. That will be the Captain [Faramir]: he can master both beasts and men."

Then, during the later retreat of Faramir's men across the Pelennor:

At last, less than a mile from the City, a more ordered mass of men came into view, marching not running, still holding together. The watchers held their breath. "Faramir must be there," they said. "He can govern man and beast."

Tolkien said of the ancient Númenóreans:

But nearly all women could ride horses, treating them honourably, and housing them more nobly than any other of their domestic animals. The stables of a great man were often as large and as fair to look upon as his own house. Both men and women rode horses for pleasure … and in ceremony of state both men and women of rank, even queens, would ride, on horseback amid their escorts or retinues … The Númenóreans trained their horses to hear and understand calls (by voice or whistling) from great distances; and also, where there was great love between men or women and their favorite steeds, they could (or so it is said in ancient tales) summon them at need by their thought alone. So it was also with their dogs.

Likely the same Númenórean abilities were used for evil by Queen Berúthiel against her cats. In an interview with Daphne Castell, Tolkien said:

She [Berúthiel] was one of these people who loathe cats, but cats will jump on them and follow them about—you know how sometimes they pursue people who hate them? I have a friend like that. I’m afraid she took to torturing them for amusement, but she kept some and used them—trained them to go on evil errands by night, to spy on her enemies or terrify them.

The more formal version of the Berúthiel lore recurs in Unfinished Tales:

She had nine black cats and one white, her slaves, with whom she conversed, or read their memories, setting them to discover all the dark secrets of Gondor, so that she knew those things "that men wish most to keep hidden," setting the white cat to spy upon the black, and tormenting them.

Faramir, by contrast, has a strong aversion to harming/killing animals for any reason other than genuine need, but apparently quite similar basic abilities. He typically uses these abilities to try to compassionately understand other people or gather necessary information, rather than for domination or provoking fear. Even so, Faramir does seem to use his mental powers pretty much all the time with no attempt to conceal what he's doing—he says some pretty outlandish things to Frodo and Sam as if they're very ordinary, but it doesn't seem that most people he knows can do all these things. This stuff is ordinary to him because it flows out of his fundamental being, not because it's common.

It's not clear how much fine control he has, interestingly. This is more headcanon perhaps, but I don't feel like it's completely under his control, even while it's much more controlled than things like Faramir's vision of Boromir's funeral boat, his frequent, repeated dreams of Númenor's destruction, the Ring riddle dream he received multiple times, or even his suspiciously specific "guess" of what passed between Galadriel and Boromir in Lothlórien. Yet his more everyday mental powers do seem to involve some measure of deliberate effort in a lot of the instances we see, given the differing degrees of difficulty and strain we see with the powers he and Denethor exhibit more frequently and consistently.

This is is also interesting wrt Éowyn, because Tolkien describes Faramir's perception of her as "clear sight" (which I suspect is just Tolkien's preferred parlance for "clairvoyance"). Faramir perceives a lot more of what's going on with Éowyn than I think he had materially observable evidence for—but does not see everything that's going on with her by any means. He seems to understand basically everything about her feelings for Aragorn, more than Éowyn herself does, but does not know if she loves him [Faramir].

I'm guessing that it's more difficult to "see" this way when it's directly personal (one of the tragedies of his and Denethor's relationship is that their shared mental powers do not enable either to realize how much they love each other). But it also doesn't seem like he's trying to overcome Éowyn's mental resistance the way he was with Gollum, and possibly Frodo and Sam—he does handle it a bit differently when it's not a matter of critical military urgency. With Éowyn, he sees what his abilities make clear to him, is interested enough to seek out Merry (and also perceive more than Merry says, because Faramir has never been a normal person one day in his life) but doesn't seem to really push either of them.

So I tend to imagine that with someone like Faramir, Denethor, Aragorn etc, we're usually seeing a relatively passive, natural form of low-grade telepathy that simply derives from their fundamental nature and personalities (as we see in Faramir with Éowyn, possibly Faramir with Aragorn). That can be kicked up to more powerful, forceful telepathy via active exertion of the will (as described by Gandalf wrt Denethor's ability to "bend[] his will thither" to see what passes in others' minds, and seen with Faramir vs Gollum, Aragorn vs the Mouth of Sauron, more subtly Faramir vs Denethor). At a high point of strain this can be done very aggressively or defensively (Denethor vs Gandalf, Denethor vs Saruman, Denethor vs Sauron seriously is there a Maia that man won't fight, Faramir vs the Black Breath given his completely unique symptoms that Aragorn attributes to his "staunch will", possibly Aragorn vs the Black Breath in a healing capacity...).

Anyway, I hope these massive walls of text are helpful or interesting! Thanks for the ask :)

[airenyah]

pics for better view:

(source)

pics for better view:

(source | source)

pics for better view:

(source)

Joong talking about the moodboard tweets when a fan asked in his Twitter Space on August 3rd, 2024:

TRANSCRIPT (as far as I can make out the words)

*italics indicate a translation

Fan: Your tweet last night. (giggles continuously) Joong: Yep. Ah, it's about... [unintelligible] something? Buddy, did you see that? Buddy, did you see; did you see that? Dunk: I did. Joong: Super funny. Fan: You searched it from... Joong: Yeah. Fan: You searched it from Pinterest? (laughs) Or... well. Joong: It's actually, it comes from so many places like Pinterest, Canva, and my gallery already. I have [unintelligible]. Fan: (laughs) And Dunk, what do you think about that? Of what Joong tweeted. Dunk: Is it though? (everyone laughs) Fan: Or maybe another reaction? Or... yes, it... Yes.. it... Dunk: (pause) Could be for now. Could be, could be. (Joong and the fan giggle) Fan: Okay. Okay. Maybe... maybe yes, it's for me. 'Cause I'm still shaking right now, I can't imagine anything... anything else. Thank you so much. Joong: Thank you so much. Dunk: Thank you. Joong: Thank you.

(source)

[tagidearte]

There's something special about Moon being the only side of the DCA who has canonically (gameverse) voiced his counterpart's name ("No more Sun", which yes it's not him directly saying Sun's name since it's a figure of speech, but still) whereas Sun - the chatterbox - only refers to Moon via "he" or "other me". Moon, the quiet one who mostly laughs vs Sun who mostly uses words. Sun, who is scared of Moon, never utters his name whereas Moon clearly has no problem with it. Both of them using "we☀️/us🌙" prior to Eclipse. Moon, whose only opinion of Sun we can infer is "the other me trapped me in light so now I trap him in shadow", vs Sun's whole thing which is profoundly more fleshed out.

I don't know man, the "no more Sun" line always did things to me. I remember playing Ruin for the first time and getting this... jarring emotion when I heard Moon saying that. It's such a small line but good god did I latch onto it.

[right-agent]

me with. wilson

[absolutebl]

hello! i was wondering, what pronouns do you use? i was just thinking about your blog today and realized i didn't know how to refer to you!

mostly I answer to "yes... and?"

[gros-chat-fait]

Konoha's three-headed beast.

---

I realized recently that this blog had its 5th birthday back in August. So this is sort of a celebratory redraw of maybe the first drawing I posted, aptly titled: Naruto's harem. It exists in an alternative universe in my brain where Neji is alive and thriving and is being an awesome uncle to Naruto and Hinata's kids; Shikamaru/Temari are nomadic diplomats neither of which have to give up their homeland nor their day jobs for the other; and Sasuke is still a wandering deep-state agent, presumably (can you tell I haven't read the sequel?); and they all help run the village behind the scene.

Now have I improved? The more I draw the more I realize how limited my abilities are, but it's fun nonetheless to create and share the worms in my head <3 Thank you all for looking at my stuff and liking/reblogging and yelling about them in the tags/comments and decided that I'm worth following; I do see them all and appreciate all of them so much. I'm just not good with words <33333

For comparison:

[toytulini]

me, stupidly and weirdly resistant to listening to audio books vs reading a physical book for no real reason: man i wish there was a way to like, read a book while i crochet like i do with tv shows and movies and podcasts

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

frickin shite that was the worst small group I've ever been to in my life

[agerefandom]

only seen s1 of the TV show but my iwtv friends have dubbed me Claudia Understander for my revolutionary thoughts on transfem claudia. anyway! not the point. agere related thoughts. if they suck then blame the fact that I've only seen s1 so far

i get the feeling that claudia both adores and hates the idea of regression. even though in hindsight she sees that louis and lestat didn't really see her as a person of her own at that point, those years of playing house together were at the time so uncomplicatedly joyful that there's part of her that yearns for that easy happiness. but then, she's so infantilised against her will, both by everyone around her and her unchanging body. she'd hate feeling like a child, acting like a child. even for the joy it gives her

that would only get worse with anyone else around, too. if she did regress, it would be alone.

anyway this isn't even a request im just rambling. i love her. she's basically gang with abigail hobbs to me (<- guy who has been spoiled on Claudia's eventual fate)

- @sleepy-lil-kit-kat (rare me signing things moment)

YES I have many thoughts about Claudia and regression; most of them are about book Claudia because FIVE YEARS OLD is so very different from fourteen -- but I do completely understand and respect the need to age her up for the tv show.

For Claudia, I'm super interested in the idea of involuntary regression, because... how frustrating would it be to be stuck in this infantalized state, and now your own brain is "teaming up" with the world to deny you your adult mind? Making you younger than your body, even? The resulting endless simmering resentment: partially for Louis and Lestat, partially for herself.

And yes, keeping it hidden from both of her 'father figures' because she fights so hard for either of them to take her seriously, and she would be so scared that it would undo all of her work. It's almost worse for her to think that Louis might enjoy it, as the rift between them widens: that he would appreciate the chance to have his daughter back, no matter how fleeting. That daughter that's too young to resent him, too young to have her own thoughts and opinions. Once again, regression and resentment just tangled up in each other. She wants Louis to take care of her, but she doesn't want him to want to take care of her. How can she let herself feel those contradicting emotions without guilt?

I also have season 2 opinions about Claudia as a caregiver so let me know when you watch it for sure >:)

[chiropteracupola]

Wretched that I have to be a student and an alive person when in fact I mostly want to be sort of a desiccated hermit scribbling about their little stories. find me in the Little Guys From My Brain Hermitage.

[anghraine]

Speaking of the sidelining of Elizabeth's arc in pop culture/fandom takes on P&P, I do have a more uncharitable than usual speculation about it:

I don't think Elizabeth is written as an audience stand-in in a general sense. But the novel does give audiences a carefully-constructed space to fuck up in the same ways that Elizabeth does.

The audience participating in Elizabeth's flawed patterns of thinking and reacting and engaging with other people is not equivalent to Elizabeth doing it in-story. But I think the novel is more broadly concerned with these kinds of patterns in ways of thinking and approaching the world and especially approaching people in the world than with it as a purely in-story thing.

The novel's exact central turning point is Elizabeth's horrified epiphany about her faults following Darcy's letter. That moment is integral to Elizabeth's characterization, but much of what she says of herself and how she's been approaching the world could be fairly turned on much of the audience because of how the book is constructed. This construction is very clearly deliberate.

It's easy to feel like Elizabeth's flaws and mistakes are not really a big deal when it's stuff we ourselves do all the time and when the person doing them is as generally admirable and engaging as Elizabeth. But while she overstates things in the horror of the moment, the novel still insists that the flaws in her approach are a big deal, ethically. They are morally wrong. Elizabeth has to struggle to grow past those patterns and flaws, however imperfectly, and I think there's an implicit challenge in that: so should we.

tbh I suspect that challenge is really uncomfortable for some people to think about too hard, and that's part of the reason there's so much flailing to make the book centrally about anything else.

[an--artistic--autistic]

The way my disabilities affect my day-to-day life varies.

Some days, physically I'll feel fine (or as close to fine as I can get right now), and other days I cannot sit up unsupported due to pain and fatigue.

Some days, I can go out and talk to people, go to events, classes, meetings, and be totally unphased, and other day's, sometimes someone asking me a casual question is more than enough to trigger a meltdown.

A lot of people tend to think that however I am one day is The Only Way I could ever be, and when they see me on a different day, they assume I'm faking, or developed something new, or that I was just being dramatic.

This is super common with dynamic disabilities and ambulatory mobility aids (in my own experience)

I have had people be completely shocked when I briefly walked across a room without my cane, because they hadn't seen me without it before.

I've also had people be completely shocked the first time they see me using it (usually family), because most of our interactions had been in someone's house, or I'd been sitting down with it tucked out of the way.

None of my conditions are 100% the same 100% of the time. Sometimes I lose vision due to migraines, sometimes I can't walk due to nerve pain, sometimes I have trouble speaking or processing information due to autism. None of that is true for me all of the time.

I find it to be one of the most irritating things to try to explain because it's constantly coming up.

Yes, I still have mobility issues even though I could walk to that garbage can. Yes, I still have processing issues even though I listen to music (this particular one happens a lot and it's very funny to me). Some days are worse than others. Some are better. I have literally no control over any of that.

Anyway, point is that dynamic disability is a thing that exists and health & support needs can fluctuate and abled people can shut the fuck up when they see a wheelchair user stand up for 5 seconds.

~ And I'm sure people with static disabilities have an entire set of similar issues from people's misconceptions (though I can't say much on that personally)

[imminent-danger-came]

You ever feel slightly too weird for weird spaces

[sagesilentfire]

you know what? no. No, i will not stop being mad about the minecraft movie. because minecraft is not a fucking meme. there's a reason it got popular in the first place and there's a reason it's stayed popular, and it's not because funny haha creepers or cgi llama abominations or anything. it's because minecraft is a world with endless potential and history. you are alone, there is no one like you in the universe, and yet there are old buildings and strange not-quite-yous and every implication that there was someone like you once. and you build, and you craft, and you explore, but the world is massive and there will always be more to see, to do, to explore. the people who came before you knew that too, and they did their best, and you can feel their history in your bones, as you sneak through ancient cities, as you avoid traps in jungle and desert temples, as you wander through villages and outposts and old, abandoned shipwrecks. there is a past here, old and huge and all-encompassing, but there is also you, and with you there is a future. whether you spend all your days idly farming and mining and crafting or you go to the End of the universe and slay the dragon there, it doesn't matter. because with you is the future, and the past. and the past will not define you and the future will not swallow you. you are there, and the universe was made for you.

do you think the executives at fucking warner brothers understood this? do you think they spent half a second playing this fascinating game? do you think they read the end poem, or wandered through a ruin, or built a really nice house that they could be proud of? do you think they ever built anything in their lives? or did they look at a few memes and decide "okay, let's put a meme that has been dead for longer than our target audience has been alive in there and call it a day. yeah, let's whitewash steve too. bare minimum effort, collect the paycheck. because it's just a silly haha meme game. who cares about it, right?" those soulless corporate fucks don't give a damn about minecraft. they just want money, and i'm not going to give it to them. nobody should. don't go see this hell movie.

and the universe said I love you and the universe said you have played the game well and the universe said everything you need is within you and the universe said you are stronger than you know and the universe said you are the daylight and the universe said you are the night and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you and the universe said the light you seek is within you and the universe said you are not alone and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code and the universe said I love you because you are love. And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love. You are the player. Wake up. unless you're a warner brothers executive in which case you're ruining art and can die in your sleep and i'll piss on your grave. rest in hell. goodbye.

[katabay]

okay hang on. we gotta inject some levity back here, otherwise I might lose my mind a little bit. persona crepe comic incoming

[madi-konrad]

How long should a chapter be?

I write sapphic fantasy romance. I've self published one fantasy romance book, and I'm working right now on editing and publishing a loose (ten years later) sequel and a short story collection. I was wondering how I decide how long scenes, chapters, and even longer segments of a work (parts, "books", etc.) Thanks for reading my rambling blog!

I've always had an intuitive understanding of what makes a good ending of a scene, a decent ending of a chapter. And I want to talk around some of my thoughts, because what makes a good chapter also makes a good story--pacing, plot action, reflection on action, all that stuff. If you can figure how to end a chapter, you can learn how to end a story.

So, my chapters tend towards the short side. I generally write chapters between 700 and 1,400 words long, though I've gone as short as 200, and as long as 2,000. I do think, depending highly on your own personal style and the conventions of the genre, that a mere count of words can help you here. If you're reading a genre or book that runs long on the wordcount, the chapters will probably be longer, too. If you're reading a thriller (the ur-example of "this book goes fast") the chapters will probably be short and choppy. Read the kind of book that you're writing, and you'll get a good idea of expectations around chapter length.

But where does a chapter end? Where does a scene end? What does it mean when a reader says the chapter should have ended here, and not there?

Well, I haven't studied literature much from an academic perspective, but I have listened specifically to how people talk about story structure, and specifically how screenplays are written. And there, structure is king. You need to deeply understand how stories are structured in order to compress the wild, untameable creatures of creativity into a strict, 90-120 minute feature film length (or 45 minute / 22 minute / 11 minute television episode length). As a basic idea: your story has a main character with a goal. The structure of a story (three act structure, etc.) tells you how your main character goes about achieving that goal, and whether they're getting closer to it or further away from it moment to moment.

Story structure is goal oriented. A scene ends when your characters either take a significant step closer to or further from their goal. This is usually the protagonist, but can also be the antagonist or supporting characters, especially in novel writing. That goal could be (for protagonists): stopping the Bad Guy, furthering (or frustrating) the Romantic Relationship, becoming a Better (or Worse) Person in a specific way, Solving the Mystery. The goal should be VERY CLEAR in your reader's mind -- informed by your exposition and how you introduce your characters, as well as by genre expectations (mysteries have a very clear goal, for instance: figure out what the hell happened. So do thrillers: survive).

Looping back around to chapters: these I view as mega-scenes, comprised of one or more scenes defined above. At the end of the chapter, the protagonists should have moved more dramatically further from or closer to their goal. If a scene shows progress that is, on its own, more significant than usual, that means it can be a chapter by itself. A 200 word scene that changes everything to that point gets to be its own chapter. Those kind of chapters, though rare for me, usually do hit much harder than the chapter with three scenes that hits the 2,000 word mark.

The old cliche about ending each chapter on a cliffhanger? Well, this is where it comes from. Done badly, the cliffhangers come out of nowhere and make the reader groan. But done well, the reader goes, "Oh, no," and turns the page -- or "Oh, fuck yes," and turns the page.

I don't always have this structure-oriented perspective in mind when I'm writing. Usually I do, but writing for me has always been a push-pull between intuition and more structured thought on what should happen next. Sometimes, I realize in editing that, to maintain the flow of the novel, I should lengthen the pace of this scene, or shorten the pace of that one, or split this into two chapters so the narrative weight of the ending of this scene is increased.

Anyway, this long ramble captures some of my thoughts on how you find the ending of a chapter, the ending of a scene. If you can nail that, you're well on your way to telling more impactful, better structured stories.