stories are made to be told

The Rodeo Rule: you only have to do it for the first time once.

The Rohan Rule: if you are at a social function full of new people and you want to be liked, find someone doing important work like setup or food prep and offer to help.

The Tutorial Mode Rule: to navigate an unfamiliar situation where you fear you will mess up an interaction, preface the interaction by mentioning that you've never done this before, and let them know if you have a specific concern or question.

The Rocket Science Rule: most new things you want to try seem very complicated but are simple when taken step by step.

The [X] Will Remember That Rule: if you need to make small talk with the same person on a regular basis, try to save one fact or current event in their life from a given conversation and bring it up next time you talk.

oh wow the glass-tower office buildings we constructed when we thought air conditioning and central heating would never have downsides...have downsides?

and we're still building them?

while the Victorian house museum where I work, with thick walls and small windows and big wooden shutters stays ~10 degrees above (winter) or below (summer) the outside temperature for days on end with no help at all?

uh. okay then

You have Feanor being a wife-guy UNTIL Nerdanel disagress with him. Which is when he becomes awful to her.

Then you have marriages that work and endure: Thingol and Melian loved each other deeply until the end, and YET Thingol closed his ears to Melian's advice when his passion took the best of him. But this is not how it goes for Galadriel and Celeborn. When Galadriel talks Celeborn listens and even as his emotions threaten to overtake him, his trauma still apparent, he controls himself.

There are of course the unions of elves and men and Earendil's relationship with Elwing. All of these are loving, but ultimately the female character ends up following the male character.

Galadriel and Celeborn are different. Galadriel sets the path they follow most of the time. She precedes and Celeborn follows, sometimes immediately and sometimes following his own pace.

They are the only ship that epitomize the way Tolkien imagined an elven marriage in Morgoth's Ring:

The union of love is indeed to them great delight and joy, and the 'days of the children', as they call them, remain in their memory as the most merry in life; but they have many other powers of body and of mind which their nature urges them to fulfil. Thus, although the wedded remain so for ever, they do not necessarily dwell or house together at all times; for without considering the chances and separations of evil days, wife and husband, albeit united, remain persons individual having each gifts of mind and body that differ.

This all happens while Galadriel remains the most prominent and more powerful of the two. In Numenor, where women COULD have power and become queens, there are too often examples of men feeling threatened and trying to dominate and to supplant. But this is never the case when it comes to Galadriel and Celeborn.

They have it all: A beautiful love that endures, their days of happiness with Celebrian, trials and grief that they faced together, but they also followed their individual desires, each knowing that at the end of it all the other would be there; being aware that they would be reunited and their pursue of their needs would not estrange them. And in Tolkien's work their ability to maintain this relationship both by being together and by being apart is not a show of emotional distance, but a testament to their love.

I WILL !!! I WILL DO THAT

some of my favourite indigenous artists, in no particular order:

Inuit artists:

the jerry cans (esp their album Inuusiq)

beatrice deer

twin flames

Māori artists:

jordyn with a why

Indigenous australian artists:

tilly tjala thomas (i particularly love ngai yurlku nhiina)

kardajala kirridarra (srlsly check out ngajabu (Grandmother's Song))

And one of her own:

Oh and of course there's also the HU and Bloodywood for people who like more rock and metal mixed in:

Darkaside is a Papuan metal band

Shepherds Reign is a Samoan metal band

Lenin Tamayo, Quechua pop singer.

And of course I can't not add Mari Boine (Sámi) to a post like this:

And Arvvas, who I think have moved on to other things but did mashups of Sámi traditional singing and jazz:

nature is healing

EÄRWEN OF ALQUALONDË

Do you truly think Fëanáro cares if you flee or fly? Beloved, sweet, hopeful husband, the perpetual youngest of sons: I tell you now the stolen ships will go to Beleriand whether you step foot on the deck or not. Flowers will bloom in the gardens of Tirion whether you sail oversea or not. Fëanáro and Nolofinwë will cross their swords nigh unto death even if you run your heart clear through with the blade. The eagle does not know that the fishermouse lines his nest with eagle-feathers each night, hoping beyond hope that its children will fly.

attempting to deal with ‘man what the fuck’ events in my life by semi-realistically sketching out a woman who just watched her kindred become the victims of the first large scale slaying only to watch her hubby and kiddos packing their bags to trot along after the guy who did it, and it looked pretty nice so here u must have it too ☠️ words from my ficlet.

The tip-off phrase is "If [circumstance] was true, then we/I could do [helpful thing.]" This is not a guarantee that the person is offering, but it should tell you "I am being informed of a way to improve things."

Your confirmation phrase is "What documentation would that require?" This is essentially asking them "if people come asking me to prove this, will I be able to? Or will they not come at all?"

The answer you are hoping for with the confirmation phrase is "Just tell me if it's true, and I'll put it on the form." Note that this is not a direct instruction to lie, because they can't tell you that.

If they didn't mean to extend an offer to lie or this is a situation where they can't, then they'll list off something like your paystubs or your birth certificate. Your response back in that case is "Thanks, I'll tell my friends who qualify." This clears you of any concerns that you may have been considering lying.

The more complex answer is when they answer by giving you a form on the spot. Your job, in this case, is to scan the form and see if what they are asking you can be meaningfully verified by an official source.

Things that can be verified by an official source include, but are not limited to, your age, legal sex, income, veteran status, and place of residence. It's not generally a good idea to lie about these on official documents.

*me, thinking about how I quit smoking in 2018 and it is now the year of our lord 2024* "Oh yeah, still working very hard. You know how those cravings can hit."

*please note, how I omitted the truth in the example. I didn't ANNOUNCE it been 6 years SINCE I ALREADY QUIT. I said that I was working hard because cravings are still a thing (6 years later not said out loud). The fact I haven't have a SINGLE one in 4 years [I was Weak during lockdown but could not finish a cig anymore] is irrelevant. The doctor asking me was *nudge nudge wink wink* pointing out that labeling my cig use as "not quite quit yet" would cut some costs on medications.

Sometimes the 'lies' you are being an opportunity to nod along for are just ommissions of truth. Like- still being an active smoker for easier access to other treatments or random pains being worse than YOU personally find them. "If X is true, Y could be an option for you" is a way to allow you to snip off details to make X TECHNICALLY true. They are asking you to be a VAGUE fuck- not a pedantic one. For BOTH of y'all's plausible deniability.

"So these symptoms prevent you from doing [X, Y, Z] activities?"

Even if YOU think you are mildly inconvenienced at best, 'OH YEAH- the generalized fatigue/nagging pain/light headed feeling just makes it so hard to [whatever activity you just find more choresome in those circumstances]!'

I have also had it happen at random coffee shops. Or vape shops.

"How much cash do you have on you? Conveniently this is on sale RIGHT NOW for you for 5 dollars less than that IF it happens to be your birthday. It's your birthday... RIGHT??????"

You all ever seen that scene in the Incredibles where Mr. incredible basically tells this little old lady to get her stuff approved? It’s a cartoonish example of what happens all the time in real life.

You ever seen a cashier conveniently forget to ring up baby formula for a single mother, and then wish her a lovely day?

If somebody does this for you, and you are at any point in a position to give Feedback On Your Experience — no they didn't. Don't tell Yelp, don't tell the customer satisfaction survey, for the love of fuck don't tell their boss, even if you mean it as praise. "Employee was friendly, knowledgeable, and professional" end of review.

This page has more information and recommendations for some basic exercises:

so I threw the official maps into a geographic information system and aligned them as best I could (grid in km)

And I very roughly vectorised some of the woods and rivers of Beleriand so I could measure them more easily:

Looks like I managed to get the size reasonably accurate. We're told in the Quenta that the length of Sirion from the Pass to the Mouths is 121 leagues (= 584.2 km) and that it's 40 leagues (= 193.1 km) from the confluence of Little & Greater Gelion to the confluence of Ascar and Gelion.

Only Narog should be 80 leagues (= 386.2 km) long but is >50 km longer than that for some reason …

(ignore the ellipsoidal lengths. we cannot use a map projection of course)

SO NOW I can tell you fun things like that the Isle of Balar is almost as large as Mallorca (3109 km²) and the Forest of Region is about the size (and shape) of South East England (19 144 km²)!

Maglor: I have actually met him. He babysat me many times when I was a child.