My lil hideaway

we left and heard the earth split

beneath our silence.

For the director's commentary, allow me to ask you how you came up with this gentle yet powerful poem? What were your thoughts, what emotion(s) made you write this or feel this?

I keep thinking about the last line. Would you care to explain what you thought of when writing it? I can think of a hundred meanings behind "our silence" which made me hesitate and stop short at the first time. What is your personal meaning?

How do you come up with your haikus in general? Though I write poetry too I never took to haikus. But yours... they're so intriguing, especially when I read them again and again.

🖤🖤🖤

Thank you endlessly for your patience and kindness towards my "poetry" 🥹!

It may be a stereotype to say that, as with all poetry, it is for readers to decide what the text tells them. Particularly in Haiku, the openness that nudges, stirs, and touches the reader's imagination is vital, i believe. So, different interpretations are valid; what's more (if i get it right): Although the words are meant to indicate the concrete and the present, they should be in a state of flux.

That being said, it's wonderful to hear that you thought of many possible meanings behind "our silence". They may all very well be true. (And i'd love to learn at least some of them so that i can learn from you <3)

In the case of "our silence" i wasn't thinking of it as silence between Melkor and Mairon, rather as accordance. My own idea is to read the contrast between the singing and the silence as a means to illustrate the cosmic discord, the conflict, the incompability: Mairon and Melkor don't join in with the other Ainur's 'positive' song while their silence shows their resolve, and the theme is reinforced by the act of leaving. My intention was - contrary to expectations - not to use the topos of Melkor's song but rather to replace the singing competition with silence. The consequences are indicated in the splitting ground - the destruction of the common ground, so to speak - which also contrasts to the imagination of a ground that provides growth and is blooming towards fruit. The violence hints at Melkor's and Mairon's own "ground" on which they'll be building their world. Funnily enough, i imagined the breaking of the earth to be merely a hairline crack at that time, only audible if you're silent. It escapes the Valar's notice because of their singing. They are ignorant (because of their commitment to their cause).

As far as i know, Barthes criticised the western habit of ascribing 'meaning', i.e. composing (and interpreting) Haiku as symbolic which could be attributed to my approach even though it wasn't intended. This effect may be due to the challenge of extreme brevity whilst simultaneously conveying immediacy and a connection to nature/season as required in Haiku poetry, and this in the face of the task of doing justice to Tolkien's epic universe. I may want to avoid it, but i am certainly subject to the same tendency to imbue phenomenons with meaning.

The first Haiku from a few days ago was inspired by a photo of a friend's birthday "cake" in a dark kitchen with candles, two of them in the shape of seahorses. It was a photo posted by my friend @a-litt1e-emo who mentioned eating blackberries on that special day. As we only know each other through tumblr, and know each other only a short while, we never met. I was moved by the photo, and i wanted to offer a late birthday present. The Haiku emerged. My imagination tried to bridge the distance, the gap between worlds that are unknown to one another. I can never reach that special place, that room, that moment. The transformation of real phenomenona into the setting of a fantasy world is the aspect that represents my "world": Seahorses glimmer / to light up a night in June that / tastes of blackberries.

It was my very first "haiku". The next two quickly followed, and then the one from today (His boot hits the ground / The ground breaks, spilling lava. / The bloom of winter), all of which kind of tumbled along. There isn't much consciousness (the explanations given above to the haiku you chose are more of a retrospective interpretation of what happened) nor is there emotion that i'm aware of although both emotion and cognitive reflection are there/present (while something in me seems to quickly make connections), which may be in line with the intense present envisioned in Haiku poetry. It's just like playing. While contrapuntal poetry is, perhaps, playing chess ;), my haiku feels different, but - since it's a pretty new game - i'm unable to describe it yet.

This one is the result of suddenly changing an original idea of a poem in which Melkor's and Mairon's eyes meet in a moment of accordance. This seemed stereotypical though. However, maybe there will still be an angband haiku with them locking eyes ;)

Oh my wonderful friend who is a brilliant writer of gorgeous gardens of language, thank you so much for sacrificing your precious time by reading and even thinking about my stuff, and thank you so much for the ask! Thank you also for reading this reply. You see, in the face of my tendency to babble along, it seems necessary for me to learn about limiting words through Haiku poetry.

Nerdanel isn’t noble class and Fëanor marries her despite that breaking class boundaries, making her a higher class than she was “naturally” in.

Sauron is a Maia and not meant to be equal to one of the Valar but Melkor makes him a partner in his works, raising him to the place that Manwë, a fellow Vala, was supposed to occupy in creation.

So interesting that they both broke that social class boundary in who they chose as partners.

And you could read so much into the ego centric choice of both to require a partner that is “lesser” so that they eclipse them/ have their own way without resistance. But textually that doesn’t happen with either Nerdanel or Mairon. Nerdanel is literally positioned as advisor and vital sources of wisdom and calm to Fëanor that he is a fool to ignore at the end. Mairon is said to complete Melkor’s works, he inherits his place as Dark Lord and runs Angband in his absence.

what does this have to do with boiling your surgical tools? well look, the boiling water releases bubbles of steam which carries the malign influences up to heaven. you boil a knife, you send all the miasmic particles off with the steam to heaven. if you rinse the knife off in a bucket the water isn't hot enough, the particles go into the water and then right back on to the knife. you gotta boil it to get the particles all the way away. how can a tool or rag or a bed have miasmic particles on it when you can't smell them? humans have a lousy sense of smell. look at your dog on the hunt. are there no rabbits in the woods just because you can't smell them? we know that miasma is carried on the air, and is what makes stench so dangerous, and we know that humans can't smell worth a damn compared to dogs cats horses etc. a dog can smell if a rat died in a corner of the room last week. you can't. do you think licking the spot where the rat died is going to go well for you? luckily, what humans lack in snout we make up for in brains. we have extra brains where our sniffers should have been. God set that up for a reason.

and why does a rinse with wine spirits work? man, look how fast alcohol evaporates. my guess is that because wine contains a lot more vice than water, it evaporates a whole lot faster, in sort of an equal and opposite way that a rock falls faster than a feather. if you want the miasmic particles to get off there FAST, you dunk it in something that's going back to heaven at a gallop.

insane headline to pair with the actual photo of the beastie itself

Alrighty, I promised I’d provide some happy content after that depressing Nolofinwëan feels comic, so here we are: Elrond reunites with Eärendil and Elwing! Since there’s mixed feelings on these two, I’ve left it up for y’all to determine if Elrond will hug Eärendil back or hold off for a bit.

Personally, my thoughts on Eärendil and Elwing have changed quite a bit since first reading about them ^^;;; I used to like them, then I didn’t like them at all, then I was neutral while leaning to negative … and now I like them again! It’s mostly based on my interpretation of them though loll

Also, I suppose this could be considered a redraw for last year’s TRSB piece (you can find the painting in its accompanying fic!), though I think of it more as a successor, or a re-look, of that painting XDD

@sh1-n0bu so I decided to make a post because I wanted to ramble about eleven conception in general.

In short, I think that half-elves have human-length pregnancies.

Now for the longer bit: we know that Dior died at 36. Elves are not even fully grown until around 50 and aren’t considered adults before 100. Dior had three children when he died, which suggests that half-elves probably grow at a human rate. I would guess the same for the length of the gestation period.

A really interesting question is whether half-elves are conceived like elves. If I’m not mistaken, the conception of an elf is a deliberate, conscious process that involves the mingling of the parents’ fëar and a great expenditure of energy; the main aim is to create an elven fëa.

Human conception doesn’t work like that, and in Tolkien’s universe humans don’t seem to have the same control over their fëar as elves do.

So, when a half-elf is conceived, the process can’t work exactly like that of an elf. I think elves and humans may have assumed they could not have children together, and that Beren and Lúthien were delighted when she became pregnant. Conception may be deliberate if the mother is an elf, but it might be accidental if the mother is human.

The one question I have no answer to is what kind of fëa a half-elf has. I like to think it is distinct—perhaps something unique to half-elves, different from that of other races.