My Family: Your Autistic And ADHD Traits Are Annoying. Stop Talking About Your Special Interest. I Don't

so there’s that version in which Miriel leaves for Lorien and dies a bit later… consider; preteen Feanor inventing embroidery and weaving machines in an attempt to give his ailing mother the ability to create something back even if she no longer has the strength to.

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

thinking about Jet, as I often do, and thinking about how bryke really thought not only that vilifying the only organized resistance to the Fire Nation was a good idea, but also that making that resistance a group of mostly kids and teenagers and still painting them as horrible monsters was a good idea. We really don’t talk enough about how Jet is treated like an adult in the show. And to an extent, all of the kids in ATLA are doing things that they’re too young to do, but pretty much all of them except for Jet have their emotions and backstory explored. Jet gets one line about the Fire Nation killing his family. One line. He’s shown to be this mature, autonomous figure, a leader, taking care of a bunch of other people, and the show goes out of its way to make him both unlikeable and totally responsible for his actions in a way that a character like Azula (who is exactly as old as Jet) isn’t. I was thinking about this post, which talks about the little girl and how that draws on an old racist trope that depicts people of color violently resisting oppression as child-killers and makes real the “what about the women and children?” hypothetical, and it honestly just turns my stomach that bryke used another child to paint this group of mostly children as evil. The little girl gets to be a little girl and is protected, and her protection is used as justification for vilifying Jet. Jet and the rest of the Freedom Fighters don’t get to be kids. They don’t get to be good or morally ambiguous or even just naive. They already had their innocence robbed from them when the Fire Nation took their families from them, and bryke, instead of exploring them as the children they are, makes them out to be just as bad and just as culpable, if not more culpable, than adults who actively participated in imperialism (like Jeong Jeong and Iroh.) And then Jet’s “redemption arc” is him, the only Brown Freedom Fighter, dying violently for the cause. I don’t know, man, writing this post is making me cry, but Jet deserved so much better than that. Jet deserved to be a kid, and he had that taken from him both within the narrative when the Fire Nation burned down his village, and outside the narrative by Bryan and Michael. 

why do the sons of Fëanor gotta...be like that

I can’t write these scenes bro I just can’t

god i hate how aesthetic-obsessed we have become. i'm not talking about cottagecore or dark academia or any of the other -cores, i'm talking about everything being so glossy and pretty and perfect and smooth and one-liner hot takes and feel-good own-the-conservatives progressivism and Top 10 Company Tweets We Laughed At and ring lights and young vloggers with pastel-perfect colour-corrected lives and carefully curated messy title cards and perfect montages being called "photo dumps" and bookstagrams or booktoks or bookblrs who buy every book they read, not a library edition in sight and "that girl" and this is how you age when you're unproblematic and glow ups and "clean" "inclusive" beauty and earth tones and minimalism and filming random people without their consent and definition of the self through consumption of goods and ggrgehwrgehrgehrgehrgehrrerg

The difference between Beren and Luthien and Aragorn and Arwen is that the former follows the conventions of fairy tale and the latter follows the conventions of courtly love. In this essay I will

You know which bit of The Fall of Gondolin made me go really, truly feral? After Tuor and Voronwë see Túrin, without knowing who it is (my heart), we get this:

The cries of the hunters grew fainter; for the Orcs thrust never deep into the wild lands at either hand, but swept rather down and up the road. They recked little of stray fugitives, but spies they feared and the scouts of armed foes; for Morgoth had set a guard on the highway, not to ensnare Tuor and Voronwë (of whom as yet he knew nothing) nor any coming from the West, but to watch for the Blacksword, lest he should escape and pursue the captives of Nargothrond, bringing help, it might be, out of Doriath.

Part of the reason that they manage to cross the Vale of Sirion (apart from the cloak of Ulmo) is that Morgoth is so concerned with keeping a watch out for Túrin that his scouts keep to the road, and aren’t bothered about pursuing two “stray fugitives” come out of the west into the wilds beyond. He is so preoccupied with Túrin that Tuor slips right through his fingers.

Without ever knowing it, Túrin helps Tuor to reach Gondolin, to deliver Ulmo’s message, to marry Idril and father Eärendil, putting in motion Morgoth’s own downfall. Cursed as he is, he is still able to play his own part in bringing that about, and all without ever knowing it. And that gets me right in the heart.

By the way! BBC Merlin, in its ongoing quest to achieve ren faire levels of historical accuracy, used Actual Old English as the magic spell language. They got a professor to do a lot of the translations, though they didn't spend much effort on the pronunciation.

There are two ways that this is very funny if you watch the show while knowing OE. One is that usually when they do the "wave your hands to smash your enemies around" type spells they're literally saying very simple stuff like "jump back" and "fall." The other is that whenever they have a long incantation to read, they say vaguely related stuff for a sentence or so and then just transition into reciting Beowulf.

kidnap dads pillow/blanket forts !!! 🥺

48. Pillow/Blanket Forts

Maedhros halted abruptly as soon as he crossed the threshold of the boys’ room. “What are you doing?”

Elrond and Elros froze guiltily. Elrond looked down at the ground, while Elros scrunched up his nose.

“Building a blanket fort?” he said.

A blanket fort? Maedhros blinked, re-examining the mass of pillows shoved beneath chairs, blankets draped over them, the cozy little cavern the twins had created for themselves. He’d done similar things as a child, he recalled, though there had been no concept of “forts” in Aman. It stung his heart to think that they had never known peace, had been born and raised in a land where even forts did not stand for long...

But this would would, this blanket fort within a fortress. Maedhros would defend Amon Ereb, so the children could defend their quilted creation.

“A fort should have defenses,” Maedhros said, crouching down to inspect it. “It should be strong enough to withstand enemy attack. I would know—I held Himring for centuries, and hold Amon Ereb even now.”

Elrond looked up, eyes wide. “Will you help us, Atya?” he blurted out. “So if Atar comes we can—defend it from him?”

Maedhros laughed, ruffling his son’s hair. “Of course,” he said. “First—let’s spread these chairs out, and find some poles and books to build with, so we can expand our fort and I can fit inside...”

~

“What are you doing?” Maglor asked, baffled, as his brother and their sons marched past him with arms full of blankets, books, and...stilts?

The twins scampered on ahead, completely oblivious, but Maedhros paused, a cheery sparkle in his eyes that Maglor hadn’t seen there since...before Fingon died.

“I’m instructing them in siege warfare,” he pronounced. “Keep out of their room for an hour or two, alright? You’ll be playing the enemy, eventually. Just like our drills back in the day!”

“Atya!” Elros called. “C’mon!”

Maedhros grinned—grinned!—and all but pranced away, more excited than Maglor could remember him being in a very long time. A little morbid that it was battle tactics that put such a spring in his step, but, well, that was Maedhros...and Maglor saw the truth. His brother was happy to feel useful, instructing the twins on something important, something he knew well, and able to spend time with his sons as well.

He shook his head with a smile, already turning over ideas of how to play the game along with them. If Maedhros had a hand—hah—in the fort they were building, it would take a little more than knocking over a chair to take it down...not that he’d really do that. He’d let the boys take him hostage.

After all, of the four of them that comprised this strange little family, he was the only one who’d never been kidnapped before!