#sorry tolkein

[vypersketches]

i think he should have had antlers

[allthoughts-headgay]

watching lotr for the first time rn. finished fellowship of the ring and now im on the two towers so thats a slay. anyways why is everyone hot. well. gimli's not quite my type but he's probably roasting in all that. regardless. this slays so hard yall omfg how have i been legally allowed to not watch nor read lotr for so long. serious question.

[elainiisms]

[maeofthenoldor]

I always find it funny when straight woman ship themselves with Legolas because, ma'am thats a gay elf

[thoughts-of-caly]

ok not to give what should be an ice cold take but i’m pretty sure the script actually says “none of woman born shall harm macbeth” not “no man.” so actually macbeth (the character) is just sexist and assumed a woman would never attempt to kill him. not that it would have mattered because if she was born of woman she’s screwed too

[lucigoo]

Mahal, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

NEW DIS CENTRIC FIC

Canon compliant, I'm sorry Dis 😭 (mind the tags)

Mahal, Why Have you Forsaken Me?

As always a snippet:

Her world was darker than the bottom of a chasm because their lights had been snuffed out. They had been taken from here and here she stood in an empty bedroom filled with nothing but memories. Memories that she was the only one left to remember. No one else would remember watching the first time Fili tried to sing the lullaby that Dis’ own amad had passed down to her as she cradled the baby as carefully as he could in his little arms. No one else would know of the time Kili had learnt to whittle (terribly) so he could gift his first creation to Fili. No one else would know of the song, the laughter, the love that had filled this now lifeless home. No one else but her.

[trecciolinoooooo]

my top 5 fav silm hcs bc I laugh at my own jokes

number five: Maeglin with purple eyes. I always imagined him so bc Jolkien says Eol has very dark eyes and I imagine Aredhel with light blue eyes so I wanted Maeglin with unique eyes

number four: Maglor hitting Daeron with his arp bc I honestly don't like Daeron bc Pengolodh says he is a better musician than my babygirl FKKSKETKGKYK NO

number three: SIA-GALAD!!!!! since there are too many versions of it and I saw a lot of fanart of Gil-galad with black hair but just as many photos of him with blond hair I decided that he has both half and half like Sia

number two: Huan sleeping in Celegorm's bed and Celegorm sleeping on the floor. just think about it Huan is more "human" (actually an elf) than Celegorm and Celegorm is more dog than Huan

and in conclusion...

...

NUMBER ONE: ULMO KILLED ELENWE BC HE LOVED TURGON!!!!!!!! I DON'T HONESTLY UNDERSTAND WHY EVERYONE HATE MY THEORY BUT GUYYYYYYYYYYYYS I SWEAR THAT IT MAKES SENSE!!!!!

FIRST OF ALL, ULMO SENT TO HIM A DREAM OF A CITY (there was also Finrod but who the fuck cares about Finrod) AND HE SENT TUOR TO HIM TO WARN HIM THAT THE CITY WILL SOON FALL BC HE DEFINITELY WANTED HIM SAFE!!!!!!!

BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT WHILE THEY WALKED ON THE ICE, ELENWE FELL IN THE WATER, HE DEFINITELY WAS GEALOUS OF HER AND HE WANTED TURGON

COME ON GUYS THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE!!!!!!!!!

that's all for now thanks for reading and remember that if you don’t appreciate the Ulmo/Turgon I'll 🔫 you /(joking)

[lorepossum]

Look I’ve heard a lot of talk about people being annoyed at the changes between WoT book and show and I get that.

But also at least I like most of these people 10x more post Ep 1 of the show than I do after listening to 10 hours of the Eye of the World. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[something-pithy]

Notes and an Update: What's in a Name?

Chapter 16 of an echo, a stain features Astarion doing what he does best -- feeling terror, spiraling and at the very least contemplating terrible choices as a result. lol.

SPOILERS FOR ACT 2 OF BG3 BELOW

Those of you who are mostly caught up on an echo, a stain know I love me a flashback (and now the rest of y'all know, too lol). There are two in this new chapter, one of which is set in the Shadow-Cursed lands after Astarion has confessed his initial intentions toward and current feelings/desires for Tav to Tav (post-Orthon confession). As a result of that conversation, they've put a pin in the sexual aspects of their relationship, but are still together romantically. Then, the Araj Moment happens (spoiler alert: nobody bit that heifer), Thaniel is reunited with Oliver, Halsin's... admiration of Tav is becoming more apparent, and Astarion is... yes! Spiraling!

I think that flashback speaks for itself, and I'll let y'all get what you will from when / where in the story it appears.

The OTHER flashback, which is much more brief, is about this Tav's name. Now, I'm not trying to make any secret of the fact that the Tav in this story and I have a lot in common in terms of ethnic backgrounds when you remove the high fantasy fake world element from Tav's lol. FIRST I want to say, I don't give a fuck. There is no shame in my game. Nobody comes for George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan or J.R.R. (the Rs are for REALLY RACIST) Tolkein (don't @ me -- or do, go ahead and send me an ask if you really want to know my feels on that one looool) for writing about characters whose ethnic and cultural backgrounds are Western European / British.

Second of all, maybe I'm being unnecessarily defensive because I'm an old head who came up in a time when writing a self-insert character was like THE VERY WORST POSSIBLE THING YOU COULD DO AS A WRITER, but once again I don't give a fuck.

The lived experiences of ethnic minorities, people of mixed ethnic and cultural heritage (not fucking half-elves who most of the time are just people of the Caucasian persuasion with pointy ears and shorter lifespans than regular elves), first generation children of immigrants, and all manner of permutations of non-white, non-Western "others" are in extremely short supply in all forms of media / popular narratives in the Western world (shit honestly, it ain't just the West but that's another struggle for another day). This is especially true, from what I've experienced as a lifelong nerdalerd, in speculative fiction.

So yeah, I conceived my Tav as a mixed-race (kind of, she's all high elf, but mixed sun, moon, and sea because she's a motherfucking unicorn, come at me bro looool -- no, there are other reasons too but also she's a unicorn lol), mixed-ethnic-and-cultural-heritage person whose life choices are NOT aligned with a lot of the conventions and values of the cultures in which she was raised.

Because that story and perspective is wildly underrepresented in literature, mass media, speculative fiction, and fan fiction.

So here we are. loooool

Having said all that, I got a comment from my fucking delightful beta and queen of my soul, Komo, asking about the naming conventions I reference in this chapter (or their real-world analogues).

So for the notes part of this episode of "Notes and an Update," I'm going to quote part of the comment she left on AO3 about the story and my response, which adheres to my policy of "why say it in five words if you can say it in EIGHT MILLION." Let me know what you think!

NAMING CONVENTIONS IN AEAS

(FROM THE COMMENTS SECTION OF AN ECHO, A STAIN CHAPTER 16:)

Komo wrote:

I have so many questions about naming conventions, both from the corner of the world that Tav’s family hails from and BG proper. Like, in American and Japanese culture, women take their husband’s last names when heterosexual couples get married. In the States, there are exceptions to this rule, of course, with some women hyphenating. In China, women do not change their last names, but kids are almost always named after the father’s side (the old one child policy may have affected this, but the top 100 most common surnames make up 85% of the population anyways). If Tav and Astarion do end up together, would names be a thing they’d have to navigate? Astarion is such a possessive little yandere after all.

I wrote:

OK so this Tav's ethnic and cultural background, as we know, is mixed

(I'm not even getting into her racial background I just can't with fucking elvish loool and her families on both sides are far-enough removed from immersion in elven culture where I'm like LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL SEE YOU LATER TOLKEIN).

On her father's side, she's Zakharan / DnD-analogue MENA (Middle Eastern North African, with apologies to Said for the orientalism of the term Middle Eastern).

On her mother's side, Amnian / New Amnian / DnD-analogue Latina but -- oh lordt OK without getting into the complexities of codified colonial Spanish racism and colorism, that identity is complicated. Through a combination of executive decision-making about elves and race and how they interact with culture on the material plane (aka not in the Feywild) AND really leaning into the idea of cultural analogues in Toril / the Forgotten Realms, her Latina-analogue ethnicity comprises a mix of indigenous and colonizer racial/ethnic heritage.

(I also can't with how fucking convoluted figuring this out was, is, has been, will forever be looool.)

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, for the sake of brevity (looooooooooooooooool), we'll say Tav's full name results from the combination of her parents' names using Amnian/New Amnian (Spanish) naming conventions, BUT that means her full name (which is not even as long as it could be but is LONG) incorporates both Arabic naming conventions AND Spanish naming conventions that result in impressively / annoyingly long names loool.

In modern Spain, at least, when women marry, some don't even take their husband's name. But the kids' names are composites of parents' family names.

A Spanish child takes the surnames of both their father and mother. The structure is usually [father's surname] y [mother's surname] (though in modern Spain and Spanish-speaking countries a lot of people no longer use the "y"), but the main surname would be the father's surname. So for example, someone's full last name might be Juana Garcia y Martinez or Juana Garcia Martinez, but she might just go by Juana Garcia.

ALSO, especially for children of families of some kind of note / nobility when the dad's family was not as well-known as the mother's, this would include the composite names of both parents.

So Juana's name might be Juana [Garcia de Manzanilla (dad's composite surname)] y [Martinez de Hierro (mom's composite surname)].

So Juana Garcia de Manzanilla y Martinez de Hierro. And like, when people get real into it this can go back generations. Like, I don't even remember my mom's whole-ass name. looool.

NOW, Arabic names are composites, too, but incorporate the father's first name, the grandfather's first name, then the family name -- back in the day, they'd link these things with words that indicated the relationships. So for example, if Yemina's dad is Yusuf and HIS dad is Muhammad and their family name is Rashid, Yemina's name would then be Yemina bint/bin (daughter of) Yusuf ibn (son of) Muhammad al-(of the family) Rashid.

So Yemina bin Yusuf ibn Muhammad al-Rashid.

OK SO THERE'S ANOTHER COMPLICATION (aren't you glad you asked this question loooooooooooooooooooool): with regard to Spanish naming conventions, apparently this patrilineal thing hasn't always been the case and only came to be the norm around the mid-1700s. Before that, surname transmission was often matrilineal.

(This comes into play here because the year in BG3 is like, idk, 1492-98 or something? I forget whatever who cares it's before the mid-1700s and I'm just making it vaguely and very much not perfectly analogous with the time / calendar of the Western world because I don't have the bandwidth for anything else loooooooooool).

In this Tav's case, her mom ditched her dad and the kids were young enough at the time that she was able to, as a sign of DEEP FUCKING DISRESPECT TO HIM loooool, change their names to MATRILINEAL AMNIAN-STYLE COMPOSITE SURNAMES LOOOOOOOOOOOOL

(So for a while Tav's government name was Zeneida Nqa Tavares de la Torre de López Jimenez y bin Harun ibn Ishaq al-Jazairi loooool)

I mean this was like looooooooooooooool FUCKING PROFOUNDLY SCANDALOUSLY DISRESPECTFUL FOR HER TO DO TO A ZAKHARAN MAN especially one of SOME NOTE WHO WAS SELF-MADE

That shit was mad personal and a level of petty that mere mortals can only aspire to it was so deep

But TAV'S MOM DOES NOT PLAY

(Now, could she have just cut Tav's father's name out entirely? Sure, but 1) THAT MOTHERFUCKER IS NOT GETTING OUT OF CLAIMING THESE KIDS / PAYING CHILD SUPPORT esp if he ever got married again HER KIDS ARE THE FUCKING HEIRS AND HE AIN'T GON FORGET IT and 2) (possibly more importantly) FUCK HIS COUCH, PEOPLE ARE GONNA KNOW HE FUCKED AROUND AND FOUND OUT)

Even though he's deadass like "lol wtfever I don't give a fuck, I know what their real legal names are" and also this resulted in a protracted, multinational legal battle that was never actually resolved until each kid reached the age of majority and decided what their own legal name would be.

Ahem, anyway as a consequence of all this, Tav's full-ass, whole-ass, government name is:

Zeneida (first given name)

Nqa (middle given name)

bin Harun ibn Ishaq al-Jazairi (full Arabic/"Midani" patrilineal surname)

y (conjunction [means 'and'])

Tavares de la Torre de López Jimenez (mother's full surname)

So: Zeneida Nqa bin Harun ibn Ishaq al-Jazairi y Tavares de la Torre de López Jimenez

But as we know, she just goes by Zeneida Tavares, and she wasn't lying when she said on most docs it's just "Zeneida Nqa Jazairi Tavares."

Second...

tl;dr: Tavvy for short. Ms. Tavares if you nasty.

ALSO LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

If Tav and Astarion do end up together, Astarion better adjust them expectations, bc after all the drama that's existed around her name, he gonna have a hard time getting her to change it looool

Not to mention, she has a career based in part on people knowing who she is so... loooool

SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO IF THE STARS AND PLANETS EVER ALIGN FOR THEM / THEY EVER GET THEIR HEADS OUT OF ASSES

[bauliya]

u ever see a post and feel it bones it's in response to your own post

[raspberryjellybrains]

WORST. HOBBIT. EVER. 0/10 STARS, DOES NOT EVEN CARE ABOUT ELEVENSIES OR CONKERS.

image description start:

A black and white sketch of Dream of the Endless as a hobbit. He is shorter and stockier than he is in most aspects, with some hair on his feet and forearms as most Hobbits seem to cultivate. He is wearing a dark grey button down dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, with a white vest held closed with a thin rope pulled through horizontally three times. His pants are black, fairly standard Hobbit capris and his feet are customarily bare. His hair is shorter and neater than usual, and his face remains unchanged.

image description end.

[local-redhead-bookworm]

The things I wind up researching to write a HOTD one-shot

[22degreehalo]

I wish so fucking much I had just enjoyed LOTR when I read it. I've tried so so so many times to get into the fandom and I just can't.

me when I got the Harry Potter autism instead of the LOTR autism ig.

[ladydeath-vanserra]

seeing people compare SJM with Tolkein or GRRM is actually so so funny to me. She is Leagues behind both of them sorry

[not-so-legendary-legendarium]

You need the sequel... :3

I have him on my desk. Every time I'm angry i shake him (ㆁᴗㆁ✿)

If you know the reference I'm sorry

[nvuy]

How do you write so well? I'm trying to get into writing because I YEARN to create, but it is very difficult. Do you have any tips? I try and create, but it feels like there is a brick wall in my brain 😫 I also struggle to come up with ideas 😭😭

oh worm thank you so much im so honoured… i don’t want to just say ‘practise,’ even though that is half of quite literally improving in anything.

i am going to long post now. you’re welcome. this is my little guide to writing. in no way am i saying my writing is perfect and world class five stars, but this is just some things i learned along the way that helped me get better!!!

now this is all assuming considering you read my works that you also want to write reader inserts, but even if that’s not the case, i think all this stuff applies to normal writing as well.

what i do like to think is that ‘good writing’ is very very subjective. for example, i prefer much more philosophical pieces, ambiguous endings, extensive world building, and things like that, and i like to put it in my writing.

however, what you may like about my writing could be what someone else absolutely hates. not everyone can be bothered to read 4 pages on a heavy description of a quiet deserted street in the rain, or a dusty old library , or the bustling atmosphere of a cafe. some writers like to do scenarios without fully developed plots. some do.

WRITING IN A NUT SHELL

what really helps is to find where you lie on this spectrum. do you prefer overtly poetic descriptive writing, or straight to the point, no beating around the bush? or does it depend?

i know it’s sounds taxing to write heavy descriptions and worldbuilding and this and that, but if you like to read it, chances are you may also like to write it yourself.

this is a tip i lowkey thought was common sense, but i’ve spoken to moots on discord and other platforms about it, and a lot of writers just… don’t know about it?

basically it’s that A First Draft is a First Draft. this has been said time and time again. j.r. tolkein didn’t write LOTR in a day, rowling did not write the entire harry potter series in one shot. nobody did that.

as well as this, my first drafts never start out as fully fledged stories. most of them look like this:

notice the obnoxiously large gap in between? yep! two entirely different scenes, but under the same concept. you don’t need cohesion in your drafts. that comes with time. get all your ideas down first.

my first drafts are awful. they’re absolute dogshit. most of the time, i abandon a lot of my works altogether. but i never delete anything, because sometimes i may come back and suddenly get inspiration again.

most of my first drafts look like this:

notice how it lacks with everything. there’s no flavour here. it’s incredibly dialogue heavy, and it’s clearly supposed to have some sort of surreal feeling to it.

come back to it later only when i feel like it and rewrite it only when you feel like it:

same concept, same exact scene, but now it has more emotion. because i’ve written it a second time, or maybe even a third, or fourth (anymore than that, and im sorry, but drop it. it’s doing you more harm than good). so many people hit this writers block because they want their first draft to be perfect and it won’t ever be.

don’t focus on the itty bitty details. get the idea down first. you can always come back later. it really really helps to get out of ruts and stuff.

another thing: You Don’t Need To Start With Writing Fanfics Right Away. and i wouldn’t recommend it. not doubting you, or any other young bright-eyed writers, but fanfics are gruelling work that require lots and lots of planning.

i would honestly recommend getting started and finding comfort with one shots and/or headcanons, or drabbles, or whatever else short fics are called, because they require a lot less dedication, and it’s a lot more fun, because you can spring from one idea to another. majority of my works are short fics for a reason. it’s a lot easier to write, and i personally find it more enjoyable :) try it out!

IDEAS: WORLDBUILDING

(this next segment is assuming your fic wants to take place in a different area than canon) (otherwise, check out descriptions/images/videos of the place your world is supposed to be set in!! same idea!!)

if you’re unsure about worldbuilding and what exactly this place you’re creating is supposed to look like or how it might function, browse pinterest! there’s so many real and/or fake & rendered places on that site. is your area really cold and constantly snowing? search up some art with those key words. it could help you gain a clearer image!

let’s use an example: say the world im building my fic is based in a very cold, always snowing, always icy town. we go on pinterest, have a bit of a look around, and then we go Ooh this looks interesting!!

this is a painting by alexander andriyanov.

who are these people? where are they? what’re they doing? is horseback and carriage their primary mode of transport? do these people have access to vehicles like cars? do cars exist in my world at all? what are the surrounding buildings? etc etc.

TLDR: what im trying to say is if it helps you, look at something, listen to music, watch a movie, and then ask the question How Do I Make This About Me?

this speedpaint by darek zabrocki helped me get an idea of what snezhnaya in my multi chapter fic on ao3 was supposed to look like. obviously snezhnaya isn’t released in genshin just yet, so it allows me a lot of creative freedom in that regard.

you can always always use other people’s works as inspiration. why do you think so many songs these days use samples from older tracks? it’s basically the same thing. obviously, don’t downright copy, that’s plagiarism, but seriously. if you’re struggling to create this world in your head, pinterest is your best friend.

IDEAS: PLOTS & THE CENTRAL CONFLICT

in terms of coming up with actually plot ideas, i said it before and i’ll say it again. movies, shows, games, other people’s stories, other fanfics/books, paintings and other forms of artwork, history, etc.

if you’re writing a fanfic, most writers like to take the canon route, and you’re welcome to do that.

if you’re worried about your own ideas being lacklustre or you can’t think of anything, but the canon storyline is good for your fic, canon divergence is always fun!

for example! i haven’t posted it here, but i always did have this idea of a neuvillette centric fic based on the love letter he received in one of the world quests. so you take something that happened in the game, and then you ask AGAIN: How Do I Make This About Me?

in terms of thinking up an entirely different idea or concept or prompt or whatever you want to call it, there’s honestly no right or wrong way of doing it. it’s really, really difficult though. i have so many ideas that are more suitable for one shots that fully fledged fanfictions.

again, read books you like. read other people’s works. read lore of the fandom you’re writing about, or better yet, sometimes i go off of a fleeting thought that a random NPC said at some point in the storyline that had little to no effect on the story.

what constitutes as a good plot and a bad plot is a matter of opinion. as long as there’s evident improvement (or the opposite, if that’s your fancy) of your characters in your story, whether that be their personality, relationship with others, or whatever, then you’ve successfully written a cohesive narrative.

how most of my works start is actually because i randomly come up with one scene in my head that haunts me. i call them Brain Rots™.

for example, in my scaramouche fic on ao3, the scene that started the entire thing was of some sort of solider that presented a ring to the doctor in a very cold and barren wasteland.

and then i asked, what is the significance of this ring? is the solider injured? should the doctor care? why are they there in the first place? where is this place? where do they go after this?

hopefully you get the picture.

TLDR: figure out what makes your Brain Rot™ about the particular scene that’s playing on repeat in your head, find your inspiration through any sort of media you enjoy consuming that you find directly links to your ideas (because most likely if you enjoy something, you’ll be inspired by it more than you would with something you actively don’t like) (and this ‘media’ ranges from pictures, real life anecdotes/stories, video games, other fics, music, art, etc.), ask questions (How Do I Make This About Me), and then answer them yourself!!!!

and also just practise and practise and practise!!! you will subconsciously develop new skills by consuming media and reading other people’s works that you really like. it all comes with time :) !!!!!