#and her bit is being an absolute ultimate impenetrable bitch

[brianeno]

lydia lunch live was exactly what I expected (absolute bitch). absolutely perfect.

[starsofarda]

I am going to pretend that an era of men has not passed, because time does not exist and my brain hamsters were hyperocusing on different stuff ANYWAY.

It's time I continued with the comparisons made by @tolkien-feels started in this post here: https://starsofarda.tumblr.com/post/699114521219973120/tolkien-feels

Today we are going to compare Lothlorien and Nargothrond.

Under cut!

LOTHLORIEN AND NARGOTHROND

Galadriel, sister of Finrod: Well if you can get inside my realm you're under my protection, but it's also entirely possible my guards will shoot you dead the second you cross into my land, so roll the dice - @tolkien-feels

Again we are going to establish what are these places, why they were built and who lived/lives there.

Boy oh boy, this is gonna be A LOT to unpack.

We are pretty much in the middle of the Siege of Angband and we can point at Ulmo for being the motus primum that started Finrod Felagund to look for a hidden place. Anyway, Finrod did bring with him his sister Galadriel and again I am not surprised that Galadriel did the same as her brother.

Anyway.

Finrod and Galadriel travel, meet up with Thingol who gives them directions for the Caves of Narog and Finrod, who very much is impressed with what Thingol did with Doriath, does the same with these caves.

He was helped by the Dwarves, eventually got his epithet of Felagund.

And honestly I think that Nargothrond was one of the best protected areas, but it fell due to what I would call hubris. And also inaction, never forget Orodreth The Useless.

There are also several cursed people happening, namely Turin Turambar, Beren and Luthien and two of Feanor's sons, namely Celegorm and Curufin.

And also Glaurung.

And I think the amount of people who contributed to Nargothrond's fall was what prompted Galadriel to build Lothlorien the way she did and guard it the way she did.

This is a bit of speculation, but maybe she thought that Finrod had been way too trusting, and that lead to his death and later to the fall of Nargothrond.

I mean, let us think of the people who dwelled in Nargothrond.

Curufin and Celegorm: exiled after the Dagor Bragollach, the moment they hear the word "Silmarillion" they stop using their brains and start channelling their inner Feanor.

Orodreth (the Useless), the one who literally fled Minas Tirith rather than facing Morgoth, the one who literally threw away the crown offered to him when Finrod went with Beren to Angband and had to be convinced.

Beren and Luthien only "passed by", but let us not forget that Celegorm kidnapped Luthien twice.

Turin Turambar: the Cursed One, responsible for building the bridge that ultimately contributed to the destruction of Nargothrond by Glaurung. Righteous, but he kills te wrong people all the time.

I guess that Galadriel, having seen and heard what happened to Nargothrond, did suffer like a minor to major PTSD in that sense, so when she finally got to Lothlorien I think her stream of consciousness went something like:

My brother finrod had the right idea

We need to improve on that tho

Too many people were there meddling in the Nargothrond

Yes, sure, people might be welcome, but also the moment I catch a whiff of bitch I am killing them, no questions asked

There should be a post about Galadriel and her very understandable trust issues, but I think I can link that to how Lothlorien was built.

That with the fact that Galadriel can see into people's minds* plays a lot in making Lothlorien absolutely impenetrable. With all of this I think I get why Galadriel's reputation outside of the elvish realm is not exactly positive.

And I am not sure that this all makes sense, but this is what I personally gather. Comments, suggestions and responses are more than welcome!

---

*well, this deserves a post on its own, but let me have this because I am not yet equipped to discuss semantics.

[anxietyadventureguide-blog]

Advice for people with social anxiety / college freshmen.

I had always heard from other people, from my parents from tv shows,that college would be the best time in my life and the friends i met there would be the best i ever had.  But I came into college unlike the usual freshmen, because I percieved my junior and senior years of high school to fit people’s description of college. I switched into a different high school my junior year because my old high school offered almost nothing academically and it was a social nightmare because almost the entire student body had social difficulties caused by emotional/learning difficulties cause that was the school’s schtick. So when I came to ocsa it felt like people described college I met people from diverse places (okay so diverse within the range of orange county), with a ton of different interests and i got to reinvent myself from the awkward person i had been in freshman and sophmore year. And by some coincidence I started making friends with sophmores because i was put in a sophomore world history class since at my old high school they taught US history sophmore year and world history junior year and in osca it was flipped around. And i just ended up making friends with sophomores because i was in that history class (in addition the sophomores didn't have social groups as impenetrably knit as those of the juniors since there was less time for development, and there were a lot more sophomores who were knew to the school). And i was really good friends with those sophomores, and by the time freshmen year of college rolled around i was sad that I had to let go of my friends before it seemed like it was time because in many ways i felt more like i was from the class of 2016 than from the class of 2015. And so needless to say in college, I was still mourning because I had just been separated from the best friends i had ever had and didn’t know if they were my friends anymore. And i craved structure and was nervous, and so i came in consoling myself hoping that college would offer me opportunities to find people i liked as much as megan and alex and the gang (at the time i felt really guilty about the idea of replacing them because friends shouldn't just be replaceable, especially in cases where the friend group still exists at home. College freshman logic, not me logic). And so i came into college really awkward, panicked, and knowing that if i didn’t find a group at orientation I was fucked because after the first few months all the die would have been cast and it would be infinitely harder to break into a preformed friend group. So my idea was that to be sure i didn’t miss my small window of opportunity I had to pick a friend group and hang out with them as much as possible so i can ensure when they start forming an impenetrable clique i’m there to become part of said impenetrable clique, and no bonding happens outside of my watch. That way, i don’t have to be playing catch up to other members. However, this did not work out well. The first time lasted two months (maybe 1.5 if I’m generous, considering that at some point i started drawing out and hanging out with other people, went back for a day, and was officially rejected), and ended in a trainwreck in which i ended up being ditched out on halloween and directly told to leave their halloween movie night so they could have their “family moment” in the very intimate space of the common room (god i wish i had had the wit and sass at the time to remark that they were in the common room and by definition i should be allowed to come in).  After that i hung out with another friend group for the rest of the year which turned out okay even though i didn’t like the people in there that much. The year after i formed a real friend group out of three people, but then one of those people decided to show her immature bitch side and suddenly hate me and accuse me of “using her as a punching bag” for an entire semester, without having brought up any of it to me before or saying anything directly to me about being unhappy (which if i were neurotypical would be fine but im on the spectrum and need to be hit over the head with a brick when it comes to reading social cues, especially those that i don’t want to see), and then told me to not talk to her for an entire summer. Her spontanious hate for me has never really worn off ��(if you want to ask more and say maybe i did abuse her. Yes i did make my mistakes but it was a fucked up relationship in general and we really fucking tormented each other. Our relationship at times often consisted of us making playful jibs at one another that had an undertone of aggression that passed the line of healthy but yet was subtle enough for us to not notice it. I wish she had been more willing to forgive me or to work on our relationship before exploding and deciding to hate me for all eternity. When she sent the message that caused the rift between us I was on my knees begging her to forgive me and let us work on it but she wouldnt accept anything other than me leaving her alone. It was a double edged sword, if i left her alone she would never forgive me because i didnt seem apologetic enough, but if i apologized she would get mad at be for not leaving her alone like she asked. I think it was already done mostly by the end of the year. And she sent me a text message trying to clear things up expecting a certain response from me- getting on my knees and claiming it was all my fault to try to be better. But i bit back at her and then i was fucking stupid and asked her for a number and also got kinda aggressive because i was mad and confused. Anyways she’s the queen of the bitches toally immature , incapable of being civil and i pity any other friend she has. )Anyways, college has not worked out for me so here are some tips to actually do well in college for people with social anxiety. These are things i wish i had learned myself.

I apologize for being crass and not being encouraging and sounding like a drill instructor. I think in advice columns people often try to be gentle and encouraging and uplifting. But to me that has always sounded like bullcrap, like something that’s overly optimistic and pretends that the problem being faced can be solved with a simple solution, and said solution is very easy to do. And in reaction to that I think that it doesn’t apply to my situation because general advice can’t fit all specific situations and the reader knows how to live their life better than a piece of paper that doesn’t even know their name. And ultimately that’s true. All i can do is try to convince you, and unlike most advice columns i shouldn’t expect you to just blindly take my advice because i asked for advice, i need to work to convince you. Because for you, there is always the option to spend the time it takes to follow my advice watching youtube. So i’ll try to include all counterarguments and argue against it. I will say i have had aaaaalll these counterarguments in my mind at some points and have seen the logic in all of them.

PART I: Orientation

1: Get out of your room and do shit NO MATTER FUCKING WHAT.

NO REALLY GET OUT OF YOUR ROOM AND DO SHIT. What if you would rather do it at another time because right now your bed is really comfy? Make yourself fucking do it.. What if you’re not interested in the orientation activities? Doesn’t matter. Go.  What if you’re like me and are insanely socially awkward? You’re afraid you’ll just end up standing there feeling really weird seeing people talk to each other and have fun while you are there frozen, panicked, and feeling like you don’t belong? Go, make yourself do it. What if no, really, I don’t get it? You’ll spend the entire time imitating a human lamppost pretending to look at your phone? You’ll stick out like a sore thumb and everybody will see how socially impaired you are? GO. You have other shit to do and it’s not practical to socialize all the time, if you enjoy reading at home more you should do what you love? You believe that if you don’t want to go, then forcing yourself to try to like something you hate is stupid? Well- actually, yes. I agree with that- but only in certain specific cases. But I’ll get back to that later. Obviously you won’t believe what i have to say. Good, i would be concerned if you did believe claims as big as mine with as little evidence as I’m providing.Why should you? I don’t know your fucking life I’m just text on a paper written by someone with an ego inflated enough to think i know the answer to a problem you can’t figure out on your own. So first things off, yes- there are a million other things you can be doing alone that will seem far more enjoyable. It’s absolutely true that spending time with friends should be enjoyable, you shouldn’t have to make yourself do extremely uncomfortable things to fit in with other people because those people won’t end up being your friends. It’s college , friends should come naturally. People make friends without having to torture themselves, that’s what should happen with real friends. But what’s also true is that people who make friends naturally also likely are more able to put themselves out there and strike up conversations with somebody they’ve never talked to one on one before naturally, and to them that doesn’t seem impossible or as crazy as someone who spontaneously strips naked.It’s hard to imagine that right? It’s a lot easier to imagine that people who strike conversations with strangers are brave as fuck but also as stupid as fuck and end up in very awkward situations that would end up being really painful to watch in a sitcom. It seems like those type of people who just make friends with strangers break social rules so fundamental that they might as well just spontaneously take a dump in front of everyone.Now that thought seems really dumb and that logic seems ridiculous. Well- yeah, I’m trying to point it out to you. But consider this, go outside and talk to the first person you see. Ask them what their favorite candy bar is. Did you do it? If not, then some of this hyperbolic logic about the social abnormality of  randomly talking to strangers applies to you.

You don’t talk to strangers, that’s the rules you’ve been taught since kindergarten. You need to have certain excuses to talk to somebody you aren’t well acquainted with because people have lives and are busy and find it weird and creepy when random strangers try to talk to them like you’re their best friend. That’s weird. People have boundaries. Talking to strangers should only take place out of necessity- needing to borrow a pencil, asking for directions, maybe if you’re super brave and willing to break some rules telling people the time when they ask for it. After that interaction you should let people get back to their lives. I mean, it seems weird and jarring when random weirdos come up to you and start telling you about their lives. So why would they think any different? And if it’s just an unspoken social rule that you don’t talk to strangers without a valid reason unless you want to look creepy and weird, then going to events and clubs that none of your friends are at seems like a stupid idea when social permits you can’t talk to any of the strangers attending. At that point you’re just watching other friends talk. It seems stupid AF. So here’s my response. Yes, your logic for not talking to strangers is right- mostly. Obviously things aren’t that concrete and the social world has nuance and you’ll expect me to tell you that the social world isn’t that black and white and you need to trust in humanity and things will be easier and turn out better than you think. But what authority would i be saying that on? None. I haven’t given you any evidence. It’s at least 3x at hard to find reasons to trust humanity than to find reasons to hate it. So to just blindly trust that humanity will forgive you and strangers will be more open to other strangers talking to them is not a great idea.

Yes you are right. And you are right in saying my next advice about nuance is kinda odvious and patronizing and bullshit. But i’ll try to make it as down to earth and as logical as possible

The circumstances in which you can talk to strangers are less rigid than you might conceptualize them to be. Now I could be totally cliche and say that people are more forgiving than you think. Well- sadly there isn’t that much evidence to think contrary.  And ultimately, because i seem to forget this point while i’m writing much like i forget the arguements of my essays midway through, I can’t convince you in any way that people will be more receptive than you fear they will be if you follow my advice and put yourself out there by being really awkward.  This is more to remind myself than remind you.

Anyways, there are cases where social rules about talking to strangers are a bit more flexible. Now i’m making a large claim here so don’t think I think this applies universally. But in general as a hard fast set of rules,  how much you can talk to strangers depends on the context. It’s creepier in some places than in others. For example, you don’t talk to strangers if you probably won’t ever see them again. Don’t talk to them on the subway because the subway can be full of hella seedy people. Same with the bus. People sitting next to you in class? Definite yes if you need to borrow a pencil, didn’t hear what the teacher said, maybe they have the most amazing shoes if you’ve ever seen and you’re feeling social. Sure.Lines? Maybe i’ll discover that i’m thinking too rigidly and it’s actually not as creepy as it seems. I feel like if the thing you are waiting for is specific enough to qualify as a same interest then probably yes. Not a definitive FUCK YES ITS AN ODVIOUS EXCUSE but, yes, if you’re feeling slightly brave. So lines to comicon? Yes odvious conversation starters, what’s your cosplay, how are you enjoying the con, ect? Lines for free food? Eh, depends on if there’s an odvious reason to talk, like complaining about how long the line is (of course, afterwards you can either let the conversation die out, making the comment feel pointless, or come up with a way to keep it going.). As you can see, I’m still struggling with a verdict on that one.

And that’s the thing. Even though this thing is hella long, I’m not ultimately going to convince you. Learning is a long and tedious process, especially when it involves not just integrating one snippet of information into an already existing conceptual model, but creating an entirely new model by changing the structure of the old one. There are papers about how it takes 7 year old kids weeks to change conceptions of a flat earth to that of a round one, even if you tell it to them and say that science has proved it. Toddlers don’t understand that a solid but opaque tube can redirect a ball so it doesn't fall directly down below the point at which it was dropped.  I took a whole class about this shit called cognition in STEM education. So you’re going to have to learn all this shit i’m telling you right now for yourselves by seeing it in real life and having the information present itself over and over again until you’re able to restructure your concept of what social rules are. ANd this is hella complicated. I mean it’s not just our model of the earth we’re talking about, it’s our model of theory of mind, our conceptual model of how people work, how socializing works, how relationships work. This set of social rules I am asking you to redefine is something we have each been constructing since the day we were born. Even if I wrote an entire book, you’re going to have to convince yourself. All I can do is get the ball rolling by what little credibility and power of conviction some text on a page can lend to you.

So what’s my main point here? (heh, by now you would think I’m just writing to myself. Well, you’re correct and I’d be very shocked if you are still reading this). Social rules aren’t as rigid as you may conceptualize them because they depend highly on context. The thing is that evaluating context can be extremely taxing. That involves working memory and executive functioning and shit. You have to hold in your mind one topic (social rule) while you think about the situation in which it takes place and evaluate whether the context is an exception to the rule or not by looking into the reasons for the rule and other places the rule might apply and - let’s just say it involves a lot of thought, especially when rules that have worked for you pretty reliably have been violated. Because that’s the thing. You have followed these social rules all your life, and they likely have brought you some ups and some downs. They’re reliable. Sooooo, why would you evaluate context? Because you are still reading this my friend. And because if you don’t things will never change.

And this, ultimately is why I’m writing this monstrosity. Because I wish I knew this freshmen year at Reed. I wish somebody had tried this hard to convince me because maybe I wouldn’t today be facing the pain of having to start and find a stable friend group as a junior because I don’t have one yet. Through a lot of pain and trying and hoping that things will turn out well if i give it more time, they haven’t. After three years. And it sucks ass having to sit in your dorm, knowing that people you have trying to get to include you in a friend group are going to events without you. It is depressing as hell seeing everybody have friends around you almost effortlessly, and having nothing. And it sucks ass having some blog on the internet remind you of this. But what i can say is that I can’t tell you that your efforts will pay off. Hell, I don’t know if my efforts will pay off. I can’t say that you won’t embarrass yourself or you are stronger than you think and if you do this enough you will have friends. It certainly hasn’t worked for me yet. But I can say this. WAITING IS MISERABLE. Feeling helpless is miserable. Sitting in your dorm watching john oliver knowing that people out there have friends, are having fun, have lives, while you are doing nothing special with a friday night and haven’t done anything special on a friday night since high school is fucking misery. It destroys you. And I used to think the pain was because I had no friends and was born with a disorder than gives me social difficulties. And granted, it’s largely because of that. But what makes the pain stick is the hopelessness. It’s how pathetic it feels to have so much social anxiety that you are being ignored, that nothing is going right for you socially, and you can’t make yourself respond to it by taking agency. You can’t get out of bed. You can’t control your fate, hell you can’t control your ability to go out in public. You feel utterly helpless and angry at the world, angry at yourself. And it’s the self hatred that gets you.

So yes, I can’t claim that going to clubs will make you feel less socially awkward, that you will socially improve. I’m saying that in the long run, and even right now if you’re just starting freshman year, you will like yourself more if you put yourself out there. Putting yourself into awkward situation reminds you that you are resiliant, that you are in control of your own destiny. That even if you can’t control whether you succeed or not, you can control if you try. And it’s the trying that will ultimately make you feel good about yourself, because it’s what’s in your hands. If success is not fully in your hands, than it is nothing to be proud of. The achievement is in the attempt, in the resilience. By being able to take a risk, by being willing to take a fall and sacrifice time and effort and know that it can all be for nothing, there is achievement. Trying and failing shows resiliance, it shows strength, it shows that you will not shatter like glass. It’s not as good as success, but it makes you feel in control. Which is what will determine when the next bad thing happens whether you are able to take the hit and keep moving on, or whether it will bring you to your knees and you will cry in your room for hours. Resiliance saves so much pain in the end. IF you run every day and train for a marathon, you will be able to run it successfully. If you don’t run and don’t train you will not complete the marathon without collapsing. And life will throw you marathons and you will have to run them. And you can run them either having trained or not having trained. Now this seems cliche, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Maybe i got carried away with this paragraph and this metaphor. But there will be a day where you will need to know that you can try and fail because that knowledge will give you the strength to keep going. Knowing your own resilience will save you so much pain in the future. So even if trying never produces a result, if putting yourself into social situations only leads to awkwardness and embarrassments . it will make you more capable of dealing with the pain of not being able to attain the social success you try so hard to attain.  

So yeah, I’m just words on a screen. But start small. Say hi to a random person in the hall (scandalous I know!), ask somebody in class for a pencil even if you don’t need one. You can’t control whether people will be your friends. But you can defeat the fear if you can show yourself you can handle the fall. You might not get results. And your fear won’t just go away. It will feel just as painful, just as heart wrenching. And you might feel horrible before, during and afterwards and probably feel mortified and constantly rehearse how it could have gone better. But you will have done it. And that’s worth a lot and will pay off the next time you actually get rejected and it matters. It’s not about them, it’s not about results, it’s not about whether the interaction feels awkward or not. It’s about feeling like you are doing something other than waiting for somebody else in effort to control your own destiny. No dramatic changes, no changing who you are, just one reasonable step at a time as you grow more comfortable. You will fall. There will be times your fear wins and you go and hide. It’s inevitable. There’s so much more power backing your fear than your bravery. Just focus on that lack of control, on the resentment for all the efforts that have never worked, and then go and determine whether you are willing to let that continue it’s worth giving up the safety of following the routine that has led you to where you are now. And maybe, there’s a tiny chance that you will find the courage to break the hard fast social rules you have known all your life for just a moment. Do what you can. If you decide to go out one in 100 times you have debated doing something social but ended up in your room it’s a success. If you can-trust yourself. If you can’t , just take a microscopic step ahead. That’s enough. Don’t change yourself and your cautiousness for just words on a paper.