Sauron’s First Age Elf Ratings:

2020 is the túrin turambar of years

Thingol had the Silmaril the whole time he fostered Turin, right? Like, it was probably sitting down in his vaults somewhere and maybe sometimes he or Mablung would go have a peep to make sure it was still there.

But like. Turin. Smol baby. Bad luck charm. Walking doom magnet. Imagine if he’d gotten his hands on the shiny shiny jewel. How much chaos he could have started. The Tale of Turin Turambar and the Seven Sons of Feanor.

I've always followed this saying: hope for the best, but expect the worst.

So many people hear that, and they immediately assume I'm an extreme pessimist. Or they'll think that that saying is what makes me so depressed. It makes me extremely frustrated because I don't expect the worst in a "life sucks and the world hates me" kind of way.

I struggle when things go wrong, especially when it catches me off guard. Unexpected bad things can trigger big, out of control emotions, and for my autism (and cptsd) that's hard to deal with. It can lead to things being more traumatic than they need to be if I'm not prepared for the bad outcome. The whole situation feels out of control, and I don't always have a good sense of clarity when I'm having intense emotions or a meltdown, which makes my own response feel out of my control.

So, I try and expect and prepare for the worst. I talk myself through what I will do if something doesn't go the way I want. I make guesses on how I will feel, and talk myself through those emotions before they've ever even come up. I make plans on what my next steps will be, even if those next steps are simply time to recover from disappointment. All the while, I still am hoping for the best. I want things to go well, I want to succeed. I hold my breath, cross my fingers, and wish for things to turn out well.

Nobody ever understands this. I'm not trying to be a pessimist, I'm trying to accommodate for myself and make my life easier, to make my life happier. Life, by chance, is going to disappoint sometimes. I don't want to be blindsided and thrown into a tailspin. I want to be able to sit with myself and process, and move on. And I don't know why people can't understand that.

There’s some really disturbing stuff in The Nature of Middle-earth; I’m not sure whether these ideas were some of the ones Tolkien considered for how orcs were created, or if he saw them as something different, but he’s provided plenty of fodder for darkfic writers.

…it is recorded in the histories that Morgoth, and Sauron after him, would druve out the fëa by terror, and then feed the body and make it a beast…it [would become] an animal, seeking nothing more than food by which its corporeal life may be continued, and seeking it only after the manner of beasts, as it may find it by limbs and senses.

Jirt, that’s a zombie. It’s dead, non-sapient, still moving around, and only driven by looking for food. And typically created by an evil power through evil means. You invented Middle-earth zombies.

And worse, [Morgoth or Sauron] would daunt the fëa within the body and reduce it to a stupor of horror, so that it was impotent; and then nourish the body foully, so that it became bestial, to the horror and torment of the fëa.

This does seem like a mechanism for the creation of orcs. Morgoth takes an elf, overpowers the fëa so that it is no longer in control of the body, and then, well, the implication is that he feeds the body the flesh of elves or men to further torment the fëa. In the short term, the hröa is basically a beast under Morgoth’s control; over time, the fëa might become more active, but horrified, sickened, and twisted by the nature of the hröa and the purposes for which it has been used. It is evil because, outside of its control, it has done and been used for horrific things that it can’t process without becoming evil.

Brr.

I read this little fact in my King Island book and i don't see it come up in any other source and it really makes some other aspects of the culture make sense so i wanted to share:

In Inupiaq cultural tradition, men would fast when they hunted. They would get up at dawn, test the weather by standing barefoot near the entrance of the house, and if hunting was an option, they'd have a little water and no food before heading out. A man wouldn't eat anything that day until he got home in the evening

Literally obsessed with @damianwaynerocks ‘s post about Zuko meeting Batman, all dialogue is from that. Anyway, here’s Robin!Zuko feat. his blue spirit mask (kind of):

For Feanorian week, Miriel Serinde, in whose arms began the burning history of Noldor.

[ID: a digital painting of Finduilas, princess of Nargothrond. She is facing towards the viewer, standing by a floor to ceiling window through which golden light is flowing into the room. Finduilas's head is tilted down and to her left, as she looks away from the window at something below her eye level in the interior of the room. Her left hand rests below her jaw and her right at her waist; her expression is pensive. She is dressed in a floor-length, light yellow dress with light blue embroidery at the neckline, bottom hem, and ends of the short sleeves. The dress is belted about her waist with a thin, tassled ribbon of the same light blue. She also wears a purple shawl draped over her right shoulder and arm, a golden or bronze bracelet on her left wrist, and white gemstone earrings. Her golden hair is pulled back from her face but left loose and curling down past her waist. End ID.]

Finduilas for moynal ⭐

Ok but autistic Tolkien elves.

Elves who get so easily overwhelmed by all they can hear and see and sense.  The Lord Elrond teaches them how to focus themselves on the waterfall of Imladris, and a small number of them go to its base every morning and close their eyes and focus in on just the rushing water.  The Lady Galadriel teaches another approach–to climb the tallest tree in the Golden woods and sit in its high branches and watch wordless Arien or Tilion glide through Varda’s silent realm.

Autistic elves who stim with tree bark, tracing its intricacies and seeing how deep they can sense the textures.  Elves stimming in the rivers and teaching the allistic elves how best to move with the water, and Ulmo blessing their dancing because while the allistic may have a connection to the waters, the autistic elves in their hypersensitivity discover new ways of moving that mimic the musics Ulmo still remembers in the Creation of the World.

Autistic elves finding a special kind of kinship with autistic humans and even dwarves, and wanting to help teach them how to be good and kind to themselves.  Autistic elves whose special interests are language or autism itself writing tomes in human languages for doctors on what they’ve found makes them happiest and healthiest throughout the ages.

Autistic elves with special interests in orc and goblin culture helping travelers learn how to spot the signs that they could be walking into a dangerous area and using their knowledge to help keep travelers safe.  

Autistic elves being a deeply positive part of elven society.

“But you always have to watch Tolkien with water. He never uses it unmeaningfully. Pools and lakes mirror stars, and hold hidden things. The Anduin has contrastin banks and, moreover, reeks of history. In a way, it is history, and the Fellowship is going with the current, to break up in confusion at the falls of Rauros. It is worth pointing out that when Aragorn later uses the same river, he comes up it, against the current, changing a course of events that seems inevitable. The other water is of course the Sea. This has been sounding dimly in our ears throughout the book, but in Lothlorien it begins to thunder. Does it suggest loss, departure and death? Certainly. But since water is always life to Tolkien, it must also be eternity.”

— Diana Wynne Jones, ‘The Shape of the Narrative in The Lord of the Rings.’