this isn't just your dream.

Frodo has lost hope, as well as the ability to access any positive emotion, by Return. He is already losing it in Towers: he keeps going through duty and determination and of course Sam's constant help.

For most of the story, Sam is fueled by hope, which is why it's such a huge moment when he finally lets go of the hope of surviving and returning home, and focuses on making it to the Mountain. To speed their way and lighten the load, he throws his beloved pots and pans into a pit, accepting that he will never cook, or eat, again.

When Eowyn kills the Witch King, she's beyond hope and seeking for a glorious death in battle. It's possible that in addition to her love and loyalty for Théoden, she's strengthened by her hopelessness, the fear of the Nazgúl cannot touch someone who's already past despair.

Faramir is his father's son, he doesn't have any more hope of Gondor's victory or survival than Denethor does, he says as much to Frodo. What hope have we? It is long since we had any hope. ... We are a failing people, a springless autumn. He knows he's fighting a losing war and it's killing him. When he rejects the ring, he doesn't do it in the hope that his people can survive without it, he has good reason to believe they cannot. He acts correctly in the absence of hope.

Of course LOTR has a (mostly) happy ending, all the unlikely hopes come true, the characters who have lost hope gain what they didn't even hope for, and everyone is rewarded for their bravery and goodness, so on some level the message is that hope was justified. But the book never chastises characters who lost hope, it was completely reasonable of them to do so. Despair pushed Théoden and Denethor into inaction, pushed Saruman into collaboration, but the characters who despaired and held up under the weight of despair are Tolkien's real heroes.

(In an early draft of Return, Frodo and Sam receive honorary titles in Noldorin: Endurance beyond Hope and Hope Unquenchable, respectively. Then he cut it, probably because it was stating the themes of the entire book way too obviously, because this is what Tolkien cared about, really: enduring beyond hope. Without hope.)

That's insane to me. That's nuts. I'm so used to seeing ships where the actors are baffled that people shipped their characters, or even repulsed/annoyed. This was an era of Star Trek when Rick Berman was doing everything to censor or just get rid of anything non-straight and cis. And yet Andy Robinson and Alexander Siddig did all that anyway. And yet some of the writers were fully onboard.

"no, but i don't see the passage of time improving the situation."

and this lesson legitimately probably helped me get my college degree.

bc like... there's the pre-test anxiety, right? and the desperate need to study asmuchasyoucan right up until the exam, right? so it's, like, fresh and in there and all? right? and so i'm facing an exam and i'm like shit shit have i studied enough do i remember enough maybe i should go back over the notes one more time...

and roy, speaking words of wisdom, comes to me and says "will the passage of time improve this situation?"

will staring at the notes more and going over them again actually make me better remember this tomorrow? and nigh-universally, the answer was "...no." and i'd go to bed instead of cramming.

and as anyone who has been there will try to tell you, cramming doesn't work. it's the shittiest method of learning: even if it does manage to stay in your brain for long enough to get you through the test, it'll fall right back out and you'll be less prepared for the next exam or class in the sequence than you would have if you'd just taken the L and worked harder next time. but you know what does help?

like, really help? like really really really help?

sleeping on it.

stopping yourself, looking up, and saying "the passage of time is not going to improve this situation" and then going the fuck to bed. you will process what you've learned better, you will be better-rested for the exam, and you will be calmer facing it because you won't have been up all night chugging coffee and pounding words into your eyes.

dismissing the last-minute crunch with a "the passage of time will no longer improve this situation" and going to bed instead of squeezing more studying out of the remaining hours helped me so much. and it can help you too.

I don't mean you can't get good at things through repeated practice. You can do that, I have done that, but I don't trust it.

I was driving this morning and thinking about how I have never developed the blasé contempt for it most people seem to despite never having caused an accident in 20 years because my sense of time is such that I might as well have been driving for a week. I'm a good, safe driver, but I do not have a heap of confidence in my driving despite having regularly done it for two decades because my sense of time is such that those two decades may as well not have happened.

I finished editing a novel today. When I publish it, it will be the 64th novel I have published in the last 10 years, not counting ghostwritten work. You'd think after a decade and 63 novels I'd be confident that I was capable of writing, editing, and publishing a novel—even be confident about the timeline for this—but no. No, I feel like I'm doing it for the first time, every time, and I was surprised to have finished the editing at all, let alone on time. Because those other 63 novels were published in a past I have a vague at best concept of. I have a record that says it happened but I do not feel it.

I cannot trust my future behaviour because for me there is functionally no past. I know it occurred, I have records, but I don't feel it the way people without this kind of memory issue do. I feel inexperienced at everything I've ever done and I cannot accurately estimate my skill level at anything, particularly not on the fly.

local matchmaker losing it over yet another unrealistic demand from the clientele 🤣🤣