Elanorpevensie - Dreaming Of A Castle Library

one of the hardest things to learn as a depressed former Gifted Kid™ is that half-assed is better than nothing. take the 50%, 40%, even 20% job. scrubbing your face is better than not taking a shower at all. picking up your clothes is better than never cleaning. nibbling on some bread is better than starving.

DO THINGS HALFWAY. NOW YOU’RE 100% BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE BEFORE.

I really don't like it when people try to present Team Cap and Team Iron Man as being the same thing, bc they're very clearly not? (And sorry for doing this type of discourse in 2025, but it needs to be said)

Because let's be honest, the mainline MCU didn't really focus on the Sokovia Accords past Civil War. It's not present in Doctor Strange, Black Widow, Homecoming (at least in a large capacity), certainly not Ragnarok or GOTG 2, Black Panther, and almost no one cares by Infinity War. When we look at the projects post Accords, there are hardly any moments where they matter, and by 2025, they're fully repealed. Nine years of being active, five of whom were during the Snap, meaning only four years, and most of the projects don't go very in depth. That tends to lead mainline audiences into believing it was never that bad in the first place and that Cap was being selfish

But we see how the Accords really effect everyday powered people in the supplemental material like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. After being introduced, powered people had three options

Go into hiding. Live a normal life. Never show off your abilities

Sign the Accords. If you were part of a government agency like S.H.I.E.L.D., it is heavily implied you had to sign or you couldn't work for them anymore

Don't sign and show off your powers? You go to the Raft

This went for everyone, it didn't matter if your power was making farts smell good, you counted as powered. Imagine the bank down the street is getting robbed, with these in place, you couldn't do anything about it if you weren't signed or you risked going to jail; they're awful options

Or what if you were signed? Great, now all your information (powers, weaknesses, danger level, LITERALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU) is held in a massive server that can be easily hacked and accessed. We see in AoS s4 that signed Inhumans are getting harmed bc the Watchdogs, a hate organization, was able to get their hands on their information and find out exactly where they were. POWERED PEOPLE WORE TRACKERS THAT WAS CONSTANTLY BEING UPDATED ON THEIR LOCATION. THAT'S FUCKING WRONG IN SO MANY WAYS

Let's switch gears for a sec here and go to another side, where thankfully, that isn't happening to you, but you do wanna make some kind of change in your community. You notice that people are going missing, that there's weird power outages and decide that's worth looking into, so you go to the council and present your case. Now, as we all know, politicians never agree on anything, so the chance of getting an immediate yes is almost impossible (I'd argue 1% is far too generous in this case). It may take weeks, months, or the decision is swept under the rug and oopsies, now the entirety of Florida is covered by a blanket of darkness!

Or you get a no, and actually, they want you to check out this tiny little village in New Zealand, and so you have no choice but to go. You quickly realize that this isn't really worth your time and feel like your services are required elsewhere, but again, you're not able to back out. When you return, you find that London has been utterly destroyed. This is a situation that Steve himself brings up, and it's something that absolutely could happen! There are just endless risks to this

Then, of course, the worst scenario, being sent to the Raft, which, bc it's in international waters, they can do whatever they want to you!! Doesn't matter if it's inhumane, no one can do shit about it. It's stated in "Jessica Jones" that prisoners aren't allowed to have any contact with the outside world, and if you go in there, you go in for good. Almost no one makes it out. Again, it doesn't matter who you were and what your powers were, you would be stuck inside with the worst of the worst. WANDA MAXIMOFF WAS IN A SHOCK COLLAR AND STRAIGHTJACKET. How in any situation is that okay??

Steve understood this, understood the true consequences of handing themselves over to hundreds of governments. He wasn't against having regulations (neither am I) but he knew this wasn't the right way to go

One side holds all the power. The other holds nothing. This is in no way equal

You can use any travel method you like, walking, public transport, so on. You can get an uber but their map has failed so you'll have to give directions. You can travel to other countries and count those libraries but you have to be able to completely navigate from your home without assistance. So you can catch a plane but must be able to travel to and from the airport. No limit on how long it takes. If you know which block it's on or which tram line but aren't sure precisely, but you feel sure you'd find it once you got there, count that as a yes (if you're not sure maybe google it now and see if your plan would work). You cannot rely on asking for directions though, this must be all your knowledge

I have some thoughts on Héra's "death" line at the climax of War of the Rohirrim and how it relates to Rohan's story during the War of the Ring.

Spoilers below for the movie!

When Héra tells Wulf that she was promised to death on the siege tower, I think that she was genuinely expecting to die there. Even if the plan went perfectly, she would be isolated from the Hornburg (as the siege tower's gangplank burned down) surrounded by an enemy army. Even if Fréaláf showed up, which to her is still a big if on timing if nothing else, that is not a situation one can reasonably expect to survive.

Yet, it's the only hope her people have to escape. She might die, but the rest would live if she could keep enough attention on her. Is this not what Théoden would do centuries later, first on the ramp of the Hornburg drawing the attention of the Uruk-Hai? Then again at Pelennor Fields, one probably last charge to try and win survival for their people. Failing that, at least choosing to die on their own terms instead of waiting for their turn to fall.

Is that not why Théoden's riders cheered "death!" at the enemy as they charged, throwing back the fear Mordor sought to spread back at its hosts? That they had accepted it and were ready to meet it? Is that not what the ideal of a warrior is so often touted as, fighting because they love what stands behind their aegis?

Héra may not have been fighting the same kind of existential war that Théoden was, but the same kind of courage was needed. Even if it all went well, I doubt she had any expectations of surviving that night. She nearly didn't, even with Fréaláf arriving and utterly terrorizing the Dunlending host into such a panicked rout. Yet, it was the way she could save those under her charge.

The moment she rode out onto the tower's gangplank, Héra truly promised herself to death.

Thinking about this quote in light of Christmas:

"And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We've got—you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end?"

There's no glass filled with the light of the Christmas star, but the light of the world that arrived at Christmas is still shining in and among us. The tale is going on, now and for always.

new zealand !!! sorry theses are taking so long lol

A Fflam being fflamtastic is a new comic page worth a Tumblr.

It's a cliché to say that Tolkien's experiences in WWI affected all aspects of his writing, how he wrote about friendship and grief, how he wrote about desolate blasted landscapes. But I wish someone who knows more about Tolkien's military career could help me understand how Tolkien related to retreats. His description of Faramir keeping his people together on the retreat from Osgiliath is one of the best-written sequences in the trilogy, and hardly anyone remembers it. It's about a desperate retreat, and a leader whose presence, whose strength manages to keep it from turning into a rout. There's something very vivid in the descriptions: don't break formation, don't start running or they'll pick you off one by one, keep together, keep moving, hold all of that fear at bay. Tolkien describes that retreat as genuinely heroic, a superhuman act of will, one that exhausts Faramir almost to death, and Denethor still does not accept it as heroic because it's a retreat. It saved men but it lost territory, therefore in his eyes it's a failure.

Tolkien has strong opinions about heroic retreats, in the Silmarillion he sometimes gives the retreat-through-the-dangerous-wilderness plotline to female characters (Emeldir, Idril), he always writes them with respect. Sometimes, getting out of there and keeping most of your people alive is a great act of valour. I feel like he must have had a personal experience about what it means to retreat, and what it means to hold a retreat together, and what it means to get no thanks for it.

Inspired by Nate Philbrick’s Writer’s Life series (link to my favorite one here..this whole series is hilarious by the way) I wanted to try my hand at it

The writer’s life according to The Lord of the Rings

lurking in your favorite corner of the coffeeshop

looking for that scene you know you wrote even if you can’t find it right now

Finishing a draft

Starting revisions

Writing the last happy scene before tragedy strikes

Seeing your beta readers catch the foreshadowing of the said tragedy

When your character does something almost unbelievably stupid without your consent and you have to make it work

finding typos in something you’ve read a thousand times

Writing that scene too well and getting sucker punched by your own feels

Introducing a new character

rb to give your mutuals a silly little paper valentine card and a red heart shaped lollipop 💖