Lost In Eriador

I honestly find the described physicality of sex scenes pretty boring to read or write on their own? But simultaneously the challenge of them is really interesting to me from a craft perspective! I think the way characters have sex can be very revealing, and therefore valuable for painting a broader picture of their psychology. But… a lot of sex scenes actually aren’t that entrenched in character

The important thing that I think gets missed a lot is that sex scenes are scenes. Constructing them requires consideration for arcs, larger story purpose, and pacing. The way open door sex scenes are most often approached in romantasy/romance heavy genres though is just throwing in a laundry list of sex acts. And that itself often has no sense of emotional continuity with who the characters involved are. There’s a direct correlation imo to whether a genre treats sex scenes like they are a prize unlocked after a relationship dynamic achieves a certain point, with no other purpose than to be sexy, to how irrelevant and poorly written the scenes in it often are

So for me, the most important metric is whether the scene in question can be skipped. The answer should be no!! If it adds nothing to the story then it is a bad scene and it’s going to feel stagnant and weird or like it’s bringing the plot to a grinding halt

Give me First Age elves. Give me Finrod cosplaying as an orc to have an epic rap battle with Sauron. Give me Lúthien dancing the fucking devil to sleep. Give me Fëanor bursting into flames because the man literally does not know how to stop being extra. Give me Maedhros using adoption as a coping mechanism, Elwing going full bird mode, Glorfindel whacking Balrog butt like he was born to do it. Beautiful, unhinged, powerful little freaks. First Age elves are something else, man.

Crafty one and Golden one

also:

the earth was flat until some people pissed off god enough that he punched it round

the sun and moon used to be trees, but a big spider ate them

elves even being in middle-earth can be traced back to one (1) dude hating that people mispronounced his mom's name

sauron is a werewolf

elrond's biological parents are a star and a bird now

there's a sexy vampire lady

fighting a balrog barehanded is so cool it'll get you reincarnated right away even if there isn't a current big crisis going on (sorry gandalf, glorfindel just did it better)

satan got banned from heaven for playing his own music too loud