Otter's Rock

[...] Turgon said: 'Fight not against doom, O my children! Seek ye who may safety in flight, if perhaps there be time yet: but let Tuor have your lealty.' But Tuor said: 'Thou art king', and Turgon made answer: 'Yet no blow will I strike more', and he cast his crown at the roots of Glingol. Then did Galdor who stood there pick it up, but Turgon accepted it not, and bare of head climbed to the topmost pinnacle of that white tower that stood nigh his palace. - The Fall of Gondolin

- fëanor: comprehends it out of spite. goes mad. possibly becomes an incomprehensible horror himself

- fingolfin: comprehends the horror. walks with the knowledge of horror for a century or so, quietly going mad. the day he snaps the land is aflame and he's riding to challenge the devil to duel

- finarfin: refuses to comprehend the horror out of spite. walks away from the horror. returns a century later to give the horror a beating, still refusing to comprehend it

- finrod: is so interested in the cultural background of the horror he forgets to comprehend it. possibly spends a year just chatting it up

- beren: comprehends the horror, walks away forever changed by the knowledge which he can't quite remember but which will forever haunt him, never speaks of it.

- luthien: uno reverse. the horror comprehends her

D: Jason～! your so cute<3 *scraping hair*

It’s difficult to fully articulate the hold that Patrick Stewart had on audiences when TNG was airing. Between the hundreds of magazine covers, the talk show circuits, and the paparazzi nonsense, the amount of baldness puns editors were compelled to create was astounding.

It was like the media fixated on this man because he had catastrophic levels of charisma and audiences were losing their minds over him (TNG was regularly beating network shows in ratings), yet he was so far removed from the narrow Hollywood standards of beauty that it vexed and haunted these people for years.

Baldness was a joke in Hollywood. 75% of George Costanza's identity revolved around bald jokes. If you were a bald actor, you were cast as a villain or a buffoon, never the hero. And if you were losing your hair, you had to slap a wig on or risk losing your career. Yul Brynner was somewhat of an exception but he was from a much different generation of Hollywood and even Bruce Willis didn't fully shave his head until 1994 (post TNG success incidentally).

In Patrick Stewart's case, there was often an undercurrent of snide putdowns with many interviewers, drawing focus to his baldness over and over and over again with low hanging jokes. It was like you could see their vanity-based paradigms cracking in real time and it was strange to witness. Imagine how bizarre it would be if talk show hosts today could only ask The Rock, Vin Diesel, or Jason Statham about their bald heads.

But karma swooped in to the rescue. In 1992 Stewart was voted TV Guide's "Sexiest Man on Television" with a whopping 54% of votes. He beat out the likes of Luke Perry, John Corbett, A. Martinez, and even Burt Reynolds (with a total of 20 contenders).

The middle-aged bald guy in the syndicated sci-fi show beat out the hottest of the Hot Guys™️ and it wasn't even remotely close.

^ Bald joke

Below this are several screenshots or tumblr replies and reblogs with commentary.

The first is by a reblog by user real trans facts and reads ’“Trans people waiting for bottom surgery” fashion.

The second is by a reblog by one weird cryptid and reads “For a second I forgot that pregnancies exist and thought this was about bottom surgery.”

The third is a reblog by user boyfriend who looks like a girlfriend and reads “I forgot pregnancy was A Thing for a moment and was just like. Hell yeah trans shirt.” 'A Thing’ is capitalized.

The fourth is a reply by straw budgies and reads “Being on tumblr is like- I’d never even think this was about pregnancy. It’s the bottom surgery shirt. What else could it possibly be?”

User pompatus of love, who collected the screenshots, has added underneath them the comment “Everyone in the notes forgetting about the concept of pregnancy you’re so valid never change.”

"too many authors in the current market are focusing on selling 'spice' instead of telling interesting stories"

"oh yeah, i agree. i started reading one that i heard a lot about and it just wasn't-"

"and it's all of these women reading their fucking mommy porn out in public like FREAKS"

Part of why so many writing "rules" don't work for everyone is that they're assuming you're trying to accomplish things that you're not trying to accomplish.

This way of thinking is applicable at every level and every step of your writing process.

Is this plot structure telling the story I want to be telling?

Does this scene evoke the emotion I am hoping to evoke?

Does this sentence mean what I intend it to mean, in a way that is likely to be read with that meaning by most readers?

If something in a story is jarring, for example, it's probably because that piece isn't accomplishing what you're otherwise trying to accomplish in the story.

When I talked about finding epithets jarring in a close third person POV, it's because what epithets do (provide distance from the character) inherently conflicts with what the point of view was intending (intimacy with the POV character).

If a scene or moment is jarring or just feels wrong in a book, it may be because it doesn't match the tone you are otherwise trying to cultivate, it breaks or escalates the tension in a way that you aren't intending, or it has a different narrative feeling than you are intending with the book.

Even down to the grammatical level, you can get away with breaking a lot of grammar rules if you can accomplish what you want to accomplish with the sentence. Is it coherent? Does it have the meaning you intend? Does it have the clarity or ambiguity that you are intending? Does it fit the tone that you are going for?