lau's mess

lord of the ring ‘farming’ sims

like, the ring has been destroyed, peace has been achieved

sadly, the whole war has left ithilien, the shire, moria, minas morgul, the mirkwood, osgiliath, and tons of other places all across middle earth a dreadful mess

which is the perfect setting for having a random unimportant character go ‘fuck it, now that all the big warriors and heroes have done their job, i’m gonna do mine and plant some fucking flowers here’

and it’s like that scene in the beginning of a lot of farming sims, where the player character is sitting in an office and despairing, but instead it’s some sort of feast where everyone is bragging about how many orcs they killed or something, and also trying to recruit for the army, and it’s really terrible

and the player character just goes ‘nope, i do not want anything to do with this, i’m leaving, this was not what we fought for’

“Well why’s that then?” you ask.

“I beg your pardon?” says Uncle Frodo.

“Why hasn’t anyone gone to perk it up a bit?” you say. You’ve been learning a bit from Dad, who can make anything grow. “Why didn’t Dad, when you were passing through?”

“We were on a bit of a schedule,” says Uncle Frodo, and you’re not quite sure what the expression on his face is, but at least it’s there.

“All right, then why didn’t you stop when you were coming back?” you demand. “You had plenty of time then. You didn’t know what was going on in the Shire, and you could have at least - at least -” Your mind is too full of all the things it takes to get a good garden growing. “I thought you said Uncle Merry and Uncle Pippin wanted to help Fangorn find his treewife, I thought they said they were going to do something.”

“You know,” says Uncle Frodo, and now there is definitely a bit of a smile in the corner of his mouth, “You make a good point. Someone really ought to go and follow through on those promises.”

The next morning, there’s a pony and cart waiting for you in front of Bag End. You think that’s a little excessive, until you see the cart is half full of tools and half full of seeds, and you know none of that was Uncle Frodo’s gift.

“Be careful out there,” says Dad, giving you a hug. “Your uncle left you his old sword under the driver’s seat, but…”

“A good whack with a shovel will do for most things,” you finish. “I know, Dad.”

This eventually morphed into the idea that spiritual disease is therefore caused by spiritual sin. I.e. you think bad things, you go insane.

Alright, I admit, I’d never heard of this, but I think I get the gist of it now. Hopefully my rambling will make sense to you. 

First, for everyone else who’s in the dark, let’s talk about the waves of innovation in general. The waves of innovation, also known as the Kondratiev waves, are cycles of innovation that have occurred approximately since the beginning of the industrial revolution. An example diagram is shown below, with the waves of the cycle broken down into portions of prosperity, recession, depression, and improvement:

It is important to note that these Kondratiev cycles are only a hypothetical explanation of economical cycles in near-modern times - the theory is not fully accepted by all economists. More information about the waves of innovation in general can be found at the following links: ( 1 ) ( 2 )

The sixth wave of innovation then, in particular, is the most recent wave of these hypothesized economic cycles. Most sources seem to agree that this sixth wave is based on the principles of sustainability (also stated as resource efficiency or resource conservation and utilization). 

Basically, the upcoming technological developments will be based around the fact that resources are finite. This can already be seen somewhat in the current trending research topics in materials science and engineering: renewable/clean energy, recycling, eliminating waste, energy storage, more efficient electronics, more efficient manufacturing processes, and even additive manufacturing (which can help eliminate waste and consolidate parts). People (and scientists) are focusing on using the resources we have efficiently as well as attempting to use less of them to achieve the same results (or even better results, if possible). This is based off of a focus on the environment, but also on the rising costs of raw materials. 

These cycles are really economic in nature, predicting booms in the economy following technological developments (i.e. innovations), so if you’re curious about the economic theory behind them, I can’t help you much with that. 

Here are some sources about the sixth wave in particular: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ). There has also been a book written about this topic (The Sixth Wave) if you’re really interested, though of course I can’t verify its accuracy. 

Virgil: Does anyone in this godforsaken group ever think before they speak

Horace: No.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

I’m eleven today. I’m eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two. I wish I was anything but eleven, because I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny-tiny you have to close your eyes to see.

“Wolfchild” by Ariana Brown, an Afromexicana poet from San Antonio, Texas. 

With four years of poetry slam experience, she is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, member of the UT Austin winning team at the 2014 national collegiate poetry slam, and is currently working on her first manuscript. At La Liga Zine we already showcased her poem “Volver, Volver”. We encourage everyone to watch this amazing piece, Wolfchild. 

We will be posting an interview with her so stay tuned!! 

Do check out her website for more information on her and on her work. 

✨✨ [transcription of poem under the cut]✨✨

Kurt Vonnegut’s Advice on Short Stories

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.

Spend some time with this character in a paragraph or two:

Hi :)

It makes me so happy to hear that!

I'm not sure what mobile means in that context but I do have masterlists!

I even a special one just for AU ideas :)

Here is also another one for different tropes and my Master Prompt List that also includes a section for different AUs.

Hope you find something good!

Oof, another week that’s already been a year, and it’s only Tuesday. We’re in the eleventh year of the year twenty-twenty-one. That’s enough to make anyone tired.