So I Was Doing Some Thinking On The Huge Spiders That Haunt Greenwood And I Had Some THOUGHTS About How

zuko and sokka can be friends

The case against Finrod revisionism 

I’ve always been frustrated by what I see as bad-faith interpretations of Finrod’s character. You don’t have to like him or find him interesting, but it bothers me when people make claims about him that don’t make sense. When it comes to Finrod, they usually follow a similar pattern, something like: ‘I thought Finrod was good the first time I read the Silmarillion, but now I think he’s bad.’ ‘I thought Finrod was a friend of Men at first, but now I think he actually looked down on the Edain and treated them poorly.’ ‘Finrod comes across as a perfect good guy in the Silmarillion, but what if he’s secretly manipulative and evil?’ That’s what I’m calling Finrod revisionism. This is not a callout post; I’m just giving my reasons why ‘Finrod is actually evil and the Silmarillion is lying to you’ is not a take that does it for me. I think it’s entirely fair to criticize Finrod. He’s not perfect and if he were I think he would be less interesting (more on that later). I just do not vibe with interpretations of his character that paint him as someone who intentionally sacrificed the Edain in battle, someone who committed genocide against the Petty-dwarves, or someone who held prejudiced views, and I think those interpretations are unsupported by canon. This is a long post, so I’ll put it under the cut.

Continua a leggere

thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes

reasons for this:

basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.

like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.

here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.

TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.

Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”

all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that

I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.

But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.

In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.

On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”

like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not

The Power of Showing Up refrigerator sheets on the 4 S’s of secure attachment and strategies for parents (Source)

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Currently thinking about a Maglor Requiem: the kyrie is a seven-voice fugue

Realizing that a lot of my "emotional oversensitivity" as a child was actually me not being able to distinguish between joking/sarcastic and serious tones

The Valar as a collective (not necessarily each individual, such as Ulmo) seem to find it difficult to empathize with beings of lesser power than they who are tied to time, especially beings who can be killed and aren’t willing to wait around for millennia for the Valar to come up with a solution when things are bad and people are dying right now. Like op said, they aren’t used to being told, “I don’t agree with any of y’all, and I’m going to pursue this goal my own way, whether y’all like it or not.” They’re not used to having more than two sides to a conflict, and throughout the Silmarillion they consistently underestimate the determination of the Children, especially the Noldor and the Numenoreans. 

So, do the Valar know the elves aren’t  just fleshy-Maiar?

(I’m tired so this might be ramble-y but oh well)

So, Pre-elves the Valar only really interact with Maiar, who basically do whatever they want and are kind of just fancy servants. The only times we actually see a Maia rebel- e.g. Mairon- it’s basically just a switch in who they listen too and not a bid for independence.

So has anyone except Melkor actually flat out told the Valar No?

Because if not that sort of explains how they have no idea how to deal with the elves.

Specifically the Noldor.

Because the Noldor, even though they are favoured by Aule, strive to create independently and without oversight from the Valar, and it’s with them the Valar screw up the most. Literally most of the problems in the first age would have been less catastrophic if the Valar had just let them leave. No first kinslaying because Olwe could just let the borrow the boats, no Helcaraxe, someone could have slapped Feanor upside the head before he got himself killed ect. But instead the Valar just…thought they’d be listened to when they told them to not go after the guy who murdered their dearly beloved king and stay put in Valinor forever, even when it’s implied Namo already knew Finwe is dead and should probably have told his son as soon as he found out but didn’t and the Valar immediately mourned the loss of the Silmarils rather than the elf who died in a place they promised would be safe.

And not knowing how elves work would kind of explain why they thought Feanor would be okay with Finwe remarrying. No Maiar had ever been unhappy with their decisions, so why would an elf be different?

It also explains the…weirder aspects of LaCE. Because some of LaCE reads like it was invented purely for population control (see sex as an act purely to create children), and that would make sense if it was put down by a race that just didn’t do sex as the ainur are implied to be. And everyone is expected to follow it and be happy, because no-one had ever told the Valar they weren’t.

Any way, idk. I’m probably reading too much into this, and this probably wasn’t articulated very well.

Tl:dr- The Valar got too used to dealing with people that do everything they tell them too and elves don’t like being told what to do Thank You Very Much

Random person: You do know that romantic and sexual attractions are what make us fundamentally human-

Aros, turning to Aces: Gods?

Aces, nodding: Gods

Ozai is so pathetic, like that “take his bending away haha he’s harmless now” trick would never have worked on Zuko, if you took his bending away he’d just grab his swords and come at you twice as hard, Azula doesn’t have swords or anything but she’s pretty good at hand to hand and amazing at talking her way out of problems, Iroh bust himself out of prison with no bending at all, meanwhile Ozai? Gets his bending taken away and then just collapses, doesn’t even try anymore, then just sits in prison and tries to get into Zuko’s head some more, he could have trained up and tried to break out too! But no! Bet he can’t break steel bars with his bare hands. Bet he can’t kick a steel lever in two. Bet he can’t even do a flip.

Also we never really see him do any really impressive firebending apart from when he has magic comet power, I guesss he shoots some lightning at Zuko, but that’s it and Azula is still better at the lightning thing. Azula has blue flames. Zuko can do firebreakdancing and bend with his swords. Does Ozai, who is not 14 years old, have blue flames? No he doesn’t.

He didn’t even do his coup himself, Ursa had to kill Azulon for him! Could have just challenged Iroh to an Agni Kai for the throne but he didn’t bc he knew he’d lose.

And then he only ruled for like 6 years! He lost a war that had been going on for 100 years bc of a bunch of kids.

Loserlord indeed