A Librarian’s Hoard

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Breaking news of the day! Most characters who die in the Quenta Silmarillion die violently! I expect zero people who have read The Silmarillion to be surprised by that.

In other news, if you’re a Silmarillion character, simply knowing Túrin Turambar at some point in his relatively brief existence is just about as deadly as getting involved in the centuries-long pursuit of the Silmarils.

This is all in good fun, folks, because I can’t be the only person who likes crunching Silmarillion death stats on a Friday. But if you want the dull details on how I determined what went where, it’s below the jump.

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You never know how long your words will stay in someone's mind even long after you've forgotten you spoke them.

— Unknown

My BIGGEST pet peeve when it comes to Tolkien is how people will sometimes characterize Melkor’s rebellion as being about him wanting to do his own thing and rebelling against Illuvatar’s oppressive sheet music.

THERE WAS NO SHEET MUSIC!  Illuvatar wasn’t forcing anything.  The Ainulindale was improv.  Illuvatar just gave them the theme, the idea, the feeling, the starting point.  The Ainur were drawing inspiration from the thought of Illuvatar, sure, and so long as they were in harmony the music played precisely as Illuvatar intended because Illuvatar had created them and knew how they worked together.  But the music of the Ainur before Melkor’s dissonance was quintessentially creative, as well as corroborative.  It was spontaneous, perfect harmony of free individuals perfectly in tune with each other, whose improvisations were constantly building upon each other.

Melkor’s rebellion was not about asserting his freedom of expression, because his expression was already free.  Instead it was explicitly about making his own voice louder and more important than anyone else’s, and subjugating the creativity of others to instead convince or force them to follow him exactly in repetitive unison.  And so, when Melkor’s goal became drown everyone else out, instead of make beautiful music together, his music became less creative, less innovative, and less his.

So it kind of annoys me when people talk about Melkor like he’s all for freedom of expression when he’s pretty much the opposite of that.

Do you ever think about how staggeringly in bad taste it is that Gandalf brought a firework that turns into Smaug to Bilbo’s birthday party

Like how were you hoping that would go

Whenever my day is going bad, I remind myself my name is not Maedhros and I don't have brothers named Celegorm and Curufin. It works very well.

You know what the Fire Nation is missing? Lizards. Have you ever gone to a tropical place? There are just: Lizards. You see a wall, there is a lizard. You go walking, you find lizards. Azula is talking? There is a lizard trying to figure out how to get to the other side. Zuko is being dramatic? There is a lizard in the background as public. The escape from the boiling rock? A lizard also tags along. Just lizards, they really know how to set the ambient 

So I was doing some thinking on the Huge Spiders that haunt Greenwood and I had some THOUGHTS about how it might affect the ecosystem of the forest. Now, these thoughts are sort of based on two main assumptions. 

One - That the spiders either grew larger and larger over a steady period of time OR 

Two - They didn’t wipe out the original habitat and ecosystems to the point of all other animals dying or being driven out / eaten and allowed time for change and adaptation. 

There are several animals that regularly eat spiders in normal settings and ecosystems including but not limited to: Other Spiders, Wasps, Reptiles, Amphibians, Praying Mantis’, Scorpions, and Birds. 

When a certain part of an ecosystem begins to change dramatically the rest of it is sort of forced to change along with it, or die out. And I think that Greenwood chose to change along with the Spiders. That as the Spiders grew, so did the creatures that hunted them. 

So not only does Greenwood have unnaturally large Spiders, they have huge Wasps flying around through their tree’s. Each wing is nearly the length of a fully grown Silvan, and their stingers the size of a leg. You can hear them buzzing from miles away but they’re almost impossible to see until they're right upon you. Their nests no longer hang from the trees as they are too heavy, but fill entire meadows bigger than a human's house. 

Lizards and other reptiles skitter along the ground or across thick branches. As silent as ever but each one capable of killing or at the very least putting up a damn good fight against a spider. They grow more teeth, or become venoms as a self defense. Snapping turtles lurk in the riverbeds, large enough to snap several elves in half if it so wished. Waiting, lurking, always ready to snap at the next thing to wander by. 

Cunning birds grew in size to accommodate the extra muscle needed to power they're powerful thick beaks, able to peck through a spider's shell with one go. Or snap a leg off with ease. Smaller birds linger around these larger one’s, each one being elected the ‘ruler’ of part of the forest. Gone are the days where songbirds ruled the canopies, and here are the days ruled by lightning fast hunters, each beak thicker than the bark on the three’s or the weight of a door. 

Beetles large enough to ride and pull carts scuttle around too. Their exoskeleton is almost more sturdy than metal and their blood contains anti-venom components that keep them moving even after they’ve been stung or bitten by other animals. Their heads seem to have helmets now, and their tunnels underneath the forest rumble with their movements. 

Other creatures have to get bigger too, or become meaner. Harder to kill. Fish grow in size to become more difficult for birds to find, growing teeth of their own and a taste of any flesh that comes too close to their waters edge or passes too slowly over their waters. 

The wolves get taller, become faster runners with wide jaws and better muscled to clamp them down. Deer horns begin to stay year round, more pointed than seen anywhere else so serve as self defense. 

Greenwood is not a place of huge spiders. Greenwood is a place of huge, terrifying, and weird creatures.  The kind that should only find existence in nightmares, the kind that should never exist. The kind that even Eru would cringe when gazing upon them. 

idril is the only person who thinks turgon is funny

Hyphens, en Dashes and em Dashes

Oh- and let’s not forget the minus sign, that thing on your keyboard that can be misused as any one of the above! 

It took me a long time to understand the differences. 

The minus sign                         (-)

The hyphen                               (-)

The en dash                              (–)

The em dash                            (—)

Visually, not much in it, is there?  

But oh what a difference the length makes! 

The minus sign is a mathematical symbol. That’s it. Don’t misuse it for anything else.

The hyphen is used to join two elements to form a compound word, like  self-restraint. Numbers between twenty-one and ninety-nine should also be hyphenated when they’re spelled out. Sherlock Holmes-Watson or John Watson-Holmes (interesting to know which one wins in the battle). You should also use a hyphen in a compound modifier before a noun, as in The Crossed Keys Inn was a dog-friendly pub.

The shorter en dash  is used when describing ranges and with the meaning “to” in phrases like “Dover–Calais crossing.” It applies to ranges of numbers, such as times, page numbers, or scores (I’ll schedule you from 4:30–5:00). That said, outside of formally printed documents, it is increasingly being replaced with a hyphen, so if you miss this one, Sherlock won’t hang you for it. 

The longer em dash (—) is about as wide as the letter M (duh, now I get why it’s called this). It’s used to separate extra information or mark a break in a sentence.  An em dash is most often used to indicate a pause in a sentence. It’s stronger than a comma, but weaker than a period or semicolon. 

You can use a pair of em dashes to draw special attention to parenthetical information, as in

Sherlock—who was wearing the same purple shirt of sex—entered the room carrying his violin..

You can use a single em dash to add explanatory or amplifying information, especially when the information is surprising:

I opened the door and there she stood—Eurus, my long lost sister.

Em dashes can also signal a sudden interruption, particularly in dialogue:

“Wait! I forgot to tell you—” The door slammed shut between us and I missed whatever John was trying to say.

Interestingly, there is no firm rule about spaces around the em dash (either word—word or word — word). It’s a matter of style. Whichever style you choose, use it consistently throughout your document.

The em dash is a relatively artistic punctuation mark, compared to the more technical hyphen and en dash, both of which need to be used accurately in legal contracts, for example. 

look: our neanderthal ancestors took care of the sick and disabled so if ur post-apocalyptic scenario is an excuse for eugenics, u are a bad person and literally have less compassion than a caveman