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.
One of my college professors used to say “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” I didn’t understand that for years because I didn’t do anything poorly, I couldn’t do anything poorly, I had to Do Everything Perfectly.
But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting. Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible. Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible. Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly… because doing it poorly is better than not doing it.
You must understand that perfectionism isn’t striving for excellence, it’s a crippling fear of being flawed and therefore worth abandonment or punishment. It’s a kind of psychological avoidance. You’re avoiding fear and failure , not embracing the thing you want to do bc if it was about the thing you want to do you’d be fine with partial victory.
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Fingon and Maedhros on the way to Doriath from The Once and Future King by @batsintheshadows
This took. So long. I think Maedhros technically took more work. I have a process for drawing gold and cabochons, still figuring out facets on gemstones. But its done! And it has an actual background! Yay!
Mary Oliver poetry prompts pt 2 number 30 for Maedhros and Fingon please. I really like the way you write their friendship.
Thank you for the prompt! <33 This turned into a bit from the meanwhile the world goes on 'verse, not long after Go On Aching Still. Also it got a bit longer than the other ficlets so it's going under a cut.
30. What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be.
Fingon crossed his arms. “You really want to do this now?”
“I’d rather not do it at all.” Maedhros sat under a willow tree, just out of sight of his mother’s house. A small river flowed along beside it; Fingon had many happy childhood memories of this river, and of Maedhros’ grandparents house with the plum orchard beside it. The ancestors of this willow tree had been quiet witnesses to many hours of laughter and idle conversation, to youthful daydreams and the occasional argument. It did not surprise him to find Maedhros out there now, leaning back against the tree with a sketchbook on his knee, and a pencil in his hand; he had snapped the book shut as soon as Fingon had stepped through the willow fronds. His hair was loose and tangled on his shoulders, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept in the three months since he had returned from Mandos.
Finrod had warned Fingon—that Maedhros was still deeply unhappy, that Mandos had hardly helped him at all, that he would do his very best to send Fingon away and reject all offers of comfort or friendship. Fortunately for them both, Fingon had never met an obstacle he did not want to overcome. He sat down and crossed his legs. “Fine,” he said, “but there’s no point to the back-and-forth, you know, because we both know how it’s going to end.”
“Fingon—”
“First of all, you should know that I’ve never blamed you for the Nirnaeth. I knew even then that if you did not come when you were supposed to it was because something had happened—and I was right. My death was not your fault, and I will not have you continue to punish yourself for it even now, when we are both returned to life.”
Maedhros’ jaw was set in that particularly Fëanorian way. “Fingon,” he began again.
“What came after—that was terrible. Of course it was—I barely recognize the Maedhros of the latter part of the First Age—but it was nearly six thousand years ago now. I have had quite a lot of time to reconcile myself to all manner of things—”
“Findekáno—”
“I would rather choose to be happy to have my best friend back than to stew in the miseries of the past, which can’t be changed. All we have is the present, and with neither oaths nor wars to loom over us, we can both shape our futures as we wish. You can try to send me away all you like, but it won’t work, because I can tell you don’t really want that.”
Maedhros sighed, and slumped back against the tree. He dropped his pencil to his lap and rubbed his hand over his face. “It doesn’t feel like six thousand years,” he said finally.
“Time is odd in Mandos,” said Fingon. “Russo, why did you not let them help you?”
“I didn’t want help. I just—it was quiet, there. If I could have just stayed…”
“Finrod thinks it was doing you more harm than good,” Fingon said quietly. Maedhros didn’t answer. Fingon sighed. He’d said his piece—whether Maedhros believed him or not didn’t much matter, because he had no intention of staying away. “What have you been drawing?”
“Nothing in particular.” Maedhros made no move to open the sketchbook. “My mother just thinks I need to be doing something.”
“She’s right.” Fingon stretched out his legs and leaned over to bump his shoulder against Maedhros’. “I missed you,” he said.
Maedhros sighed, and surrendered to the inevitable. “I missed you too,” he said, very quietly.
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I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
the thing is. any character who expresses discomfort with or behaves in ways unsupported by Standard Heterosexuality is going to be open to queer readings. but they're almost always going to be open to *multiple* queer readings. this character seems uncomfortable with the concept of marriage and never has a love interest: is he ace? aro? gay and closeted? trans and closeted? bi or even straight but unwilling to pursue a relationship for other reasons? too misogynistic to want to share his life with a woman (an uncomfortable reading, but often a valid one)? some combination of the above? very often, you could make an argument for any of these interpretations, and your argument would be supported by the same pieces of textual evidence.
similarly: this woman rejects all the men who express interest in her and seems exhausted by the whole affair: is she a lesbian? aro and/or ace? trans? bi or straight but with standards that no one has canonically met? someone who values her autonomy and knows how much that will be curtailed if she gets married? unless the text is very explicit about her reasoning, we don't know, and it could again be any of the above or a combination.
now, sometimes the text *is* very explicit and people still ignore it. I see this very commonly with ace and/or aro characters where fandom loves to ignore the character's own stated feelings and preferences to make them more shippable. this sucks. or there's instances where a character has an opposite-sex love interest and people really let their misogyny show by claiming that she never really mattered and you can/should completely ignore that relationship and not make it a part of your character analysis. this also sucks.
but. in many/most cases, there are multiple readings you can take from a given text. obviously people have their own preferred interpretations, but it's important to remember that other people can look at the same text as you and draw different conclusions that are just as well supported. the canon itself exists in a sort of nebulous state of quantum uncertainty where The Character could be any one of a number of different identities, and while any given transformative work is likely to collapse the waveform to a singular interpretation, that doesn't undo the ambiguity present in the original text.
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For all the folks who have been begging pleading asking for these in the inbox - behold. User @elikaruna is here to save you.
The instructions on adding such things to your AO3 profile are in the news post (at the bottom) - just replace the url in the example with the url of whichever other thing you are putting there. And probably change the alt text.
