LoneCrow

Hi :)

Fatal character flaws

Aristotle calls this ‘Hamartia’ - a tragic flaw or error. It can be anything happening to good or bad characters, even otherwise good character traits and with good intentions that ultimately lead to the character’s demise. They are often traits that don’t neccessarily lead to someone’s downfall, but can if they’re done to an extreme. So think of these otherwise normal ‘flaws’ as extremes.

ignorance - not seeking helpful knowledge

selfishness - not thinking about others

curiosity - getting involved in things they shouldn’t get involved in

impetuousness - being too passionate/ not thinking before acting

pride - not giving in/ not taking help from others 

hubris - exaggerated opinion of oneself/ thinking nothing can get to them

lack of self-control - can’t help/stop themself

indecisiveness* - not being able to make decisions

confirmation bias - only taking in information that supports one’s own belief 

arrogance -  thinking they are superior

Have fun!

- Jana

by creativepromptsforwriting | do not repost

Person A is not a kiss and tell kind of person, so their friends start to think that they have been alone for way too long now and set them up with Person B. What the friends don’t know is that they both already know each other – intimately.

It was supposed to be a one night stand. Then it became a second night. A third - and suddenly they realized that they had never left.

Person A normally does not go out to clubs. They normally don't accept drinks from strangers or dance with them. And they normally do not go home with them.

Remembering every last inch on Person B's body is not a weird thing, just because they only hooked up that one time. They had just been very thorough. And now the memories are haunting them. In the best way.

Person A's last one night stand ended with a misunderstanding and a lot of awkwardness. To cheer them up again, their friends set them up with a blind date. They meant well, it’s not their fault that it’s the person they had previously slept with.

Person A's friends are obsessed with setting them up with blind dates, and A knows they mean well, but they are just not interested in dating, so they just ask their last blind date and one night stand, Person B, to fake date them, so A's friends stop setting them up.

Can you still call it a one night stand if they actually already had one years ago?

Person A had never had a one night stand before, so they don't know what the correct etiquette is. They are currently bringing breakfast to Person B, who is still in bed, because that's the polite thing to do, right?

What is the worst thing that can happen when you have someone in your bed that you just had an amazing night with? Your parents deciding to pay you a visit, who are just so excited to meet your new partner.

Person A and Person B are in a committed relationship and very happy. So happy that they decide adding a third person for just one night won't change anything.

Can also be under the influence of other stuff.

"Oh, look at the stars! Ursa Major… so beautiful!" "We're inside. Those are just ceiling lights."

"Please don't leave me!" "I'm just going to the toilette." "Can I come with you?"

"My arm is floppy. I'm like a puppet."

"Can you be my girlfriend?" "I already am." "Oh, lucky me!"

"Let’s go play baseball!" "Your shoulder is dislocated, maybe not right now."

"You look almost as pretty as this moon." "That's a street lamp." "And you're almost as pretty."

"Have you ever thought about penguins? I think we should think more about penguins."

"You have a stupid face and it's my favourite one to stare at."

"I will definitely remember this tomorrow! How could I ever forget?" *doesn't remember anything in the morning*

"Oh, I think we haven't met before." "We have been in a relationship for five years now."

"You should go, otherwise I'm doing something stupid. Like kissing you or falling asleep on the bathroom floor."

"Let's get you home." "Oh, mine or yours?" "Ours." "Oh, wow!"

"I'm totally, absolutely, not at all drunk at all. Like... at all."

"Why are you all laughing? That is not very nice. I haven't even told my joke yet."

"How many drinks did you have?" "Yes, yes I am."

"You are too beautiful for me." *starts crying*

"Why are you undressing?" "Because it's hot! And I'm hot!"

*starts singing a remix of all their favourite songs*

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

• What can MC smell? Is there an ocean breeze, sweat, a cinnamon roll fresh out the oven?

• What can MC hear, besides the dialogue? Is a bird singing, river flowing, a car speeding, clock ticking?

• Can they taste something, even if they're not eating? Previously drunk alcohol or juice, aftertaste of a cigarette, smog, too instense perfume?

• Can they feel something on their skin? Rough clothes or delicate material, blowing wind, an allergy or a rash, grass that theyre laying on?

• What does the character see, besides other characters? Is the room dark or is sunlight coming in nicely? Are the colours vibrant or dull? Are there any plants?

• What's the weather? Is it snowing and the cold is making goosebumps appear on their arms? Is it hot and sweaty and clothes are clinging to their body?

• HOW DOES IT MAKE THEM FEEL? To any of the above.

Do they like the smell of cinnamon rolls or are they weirdos (I'm a weirdo, I don't fit in).

Does the clock ticking calm them down or annoy them?

Do they enjoy the aftertaste of a cig and like how dirty it makes them feel?

Are they sensitive to touch and how their clothing feels on their skin or are they indifferent?

Would they enjoy the scenery more if it was more sunny out, because they're afraid of the darkness?

Do they like it snowy or are they always cold and hate winter?

Where are the kudos? The subscriptions? The comments? The people cheerleading me chapter to chapter? Where are the kind words and compliments and reassurances that what I'm writing isn't complete crap? Where are the unhinged emojis? The asks on Tumblr? Where are my mutuals in my dms apologizing for not reading the latest chapter right away (side note, you know you don't have to apologize at all, right??). Where is the fanart? Where are the recs?

Where is my motivation to keep going?

It's something I've been thinking about a lot, actually, lately. How the experience of writing fanfic is so unique. How you already have an audience, willing and waiting and captive. And that's really it, isn't it? You have an audience. It's almost performative, writing fanfic. It's being on a stage, a one-person show (or two, if you do it with a friend); it's getting live reactions to your performance, it's feeding off the energy of the crowd and informing it back in a feedback loop; it's improvised, sometimes, in almost-real-time. It's building something that you couldn't have built by yourself. A thing that takes on a life of its own.

It's where it always was before fanfic, before online support; before recs, before asks, before moots, before fanart.

It's in realizing you're the story's only way out into the world.

In a world full of gatekeeping, this is the gate that only you keep. Turn your back on the responsibility to open the portal to the unborn (original) story and keep it open, and the story dies. And that death is on you.

Yes, it's lonely work, without the constant rush of input we've been trained to be used to. It's been lonely work for a long time: since the first storyteller came up against the silence that wanted to keep the story away from the breath that would make it real in other people's ears. And you could make a case that all the online adornments are just our recent generations' way of keeping both the storytellers and the listeners from being overwhelmed by that loneliness. (Because the listeners have their own version of it: the fear of what happens when the people who can tell stories fall silent. Good storytellers respect that fear, and remember every day their responsibility to do something about it.)

Where do the characters come from? A surprising amount of the time, without warning, they muscle their way into the back of your brain and grab you by the hand (or hair) (or throat) and shout Tell about me! You have to tell them, there's no one else who can do it! ...Sometimes you have to sneak up on them from behind, as you do get the shy ones occasionally whom you have to take by the hand and pull into the light. But give them enough silence—build the space for them—and they'll come.

The silence may be key. One of the smartest pieces of advice I was ever given was that, for half an hour in the morning every day, before starting work, I should sit down and do nothing, and listen. No music, no TV, no news, no reading, no nothing. Sit and listen. It's not meditation; it's not mindfulness. It's listening. Story's voice can be hard to hear, sometimes, until you get better at pushing aside all that relentless rush of situational and sensorial input, and better at waiting to hear the story that's as yet too frail to push its way through the portal without assistance.

To be clear: Fanfic work (or any work in universes not of your making) is a different kind of listening. Working well in already-extant universes requires sharp attention to the tones, concerns and qualities of voices already speaking there; and to a certain extent, to the voices speaking about them. And if you love the characters, too—one of the best reasons for fanfic, really—that's a pleasure.

But when working in your own universes, the listening also requires a selective quality, as the characters find their voices and their proper passions. And as for the love... you're the only one there is to love them, till you get them out into the world. If you've ever been the only one to love somebody, you know how tough that can be.

Then add to that the fillip that those people (or situations) won't be really real until you've worked with them long enough, hard enough, all by yourself? It's a tough row to hoe. And you can't ever be really sure that a summer will come to reveal whether the crop's taken root, and whether it's all been worthwhile.

Nonetheless: it's good work. Some of us don't seem able to stop. Some of us even like it that way.

dr seuss -- stole from Helen Palmer, his wife

paul klee -- stole from Hilma af Klint

andy warhol -- stole from Hilma af Klint and Yayoi Kusama

albert einstein -- stole from Milena Maric, his wife

cy twombly -- stole from Hilma af Klint

hayao miyazaki -- stole from Akemi Ota, his wife

leo tolstoy -- stole from Sophia Tolstoy, his wife

otto struve + henry norris-russell + ejnar hertzsprung -- stole from Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

pablo picasso -- stole from Baya Mahieddine

pappus -- stole from Pandrosion

tycho brahe -- stole from Sophia Brahe, his sister

johannes hevelius -- stole from Elisabeth Catherina Koopmann-Hevelius, his wife

jacob berzelius -- stole from Anna Sundstrom

henri matisse -- stole from Baya Mahieddine

george lucas -- stole from Marcia Lucas, his wife

f scott fitzgerald -- stole from Zelda Fitzgerald, his wife

john steinbeck -- stole from Sanora Babb

karl marx -- stole from Jenny von Westphalen, his wife

watson and crick -- stole from Rosalind Franklin

piet mondrian -- stole from Marlow Moss

jackson pollock -- stole from Janet Sobel

wolfgang amadeus mozart -- stole from Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart, his sister

felix mendelssohn -- stole from Fanny Mendelssohn, his sister

today i had the dubious honor of learning that william wordsworth stole entire passages out of the journals his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, wrote.

please first of all read the wikipedia articles on all these people. it will save you time.

I consider labor or influence without credit, theft.

Credit = a name on a book / paper. Written acknowledgement. Verbal acknowledgement sometimes, but too many men pay lip service to these women by dropping their name one time in one interview and calling it a day. In several cases, given the scope of these women's contributions and the originality of their work, that is a humiliating pittance.

will break this into multiple parts. this part covers dr seuss, all thieves of Hilma af Klint and Yayoi Kusama, albert einstein, pablo picasso, henri matisse.

dr seuss: Helen Palmer "gave him his life's direction". his output during the most prolific decade of his career was "heavily dependent on the tireless editorial advice and encouragement of his wife, Helen" who was herself a writer of children's books. (https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/23/books/the-man-who-invented-the-cat-in-the-hat.html).

paul klee, andy warhol, cy twombly, wassily kandinsky (who i didn't add but should've): Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) created her first, hence the first, abstract painting in 1906. she met rudolf steiner in 1908, who was unimpressed with her work but kept photos of it. he then showed those photos to kandinsky, who had not yet begun abstract painting and was almost certainly influenced by her work when developing his own abstract painting path. kandinsky, if you didn't know, is the man who had the audacity to claim that he created the first abstract painting in 1911. her abstract work was exhibited only once during her lifetime, a small showing in london in 1928. the first full showing of her abstract work in 1986 in LA is what kicked off her international recognition. (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/06/hilma-af-klint-abstract-art-beyond-the-visible-film-documentary, https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-27-spring-2013/first-abstract-artist-and-its-not-kandinsky) "In 1944, three great pioneers of abstract art died: Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and af Klint. Kandinsky claimed to have created the first abstract painting in 1911. And when in 2012 New York’s Museum of Modern Art staged their show Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925, Af Klint was not even included as a footnote. And yet, as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zweitung art critic Julia Voss argues in the film, the Swedish artist had the jump on Kandinsky by five years in producing the first abstract painting in 1906. For her film, Dyrschka contracted MoMA to find out why Af Klint had been erased from art history and was told “they weren’t so sure Hilma af Klint’s art worked as abstract art. After all, she hadn’t exhibited in her lifetime so how could one tell?” In the film, Dyrschka tries to answer that question by juxtaposing paintings by Af Klint with those of famous 20th-century male artists. Her golden square from 1916 is placed alongside a similar image by Josef Albers from 1971; her automatic writing doodles from 1896 are pitted against Cy Twombly's 1967 squiggles. They make the rhetorical point strongly: whatever the men were doing, af Klint had probably done it first." These side-by-side comparisons are available in this post. https://www.tumblr.com/podcactuses/719955771571519488?source=share. Credit to pintoras and theoldlesbianwithcats.

andy warhol, claes oldenburg, lucas samaras: their theft of the work of Yayoi Kusama is very well documented since it's in the modern day. (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180925-yayoi-kusamas-extraordinary-survival-story) "Claes Oldenburg was ‘inspired’ by her fabric phallic couch to start creating the soft sculpture for which he would become world famous, while Andy Warhol would copy her innovative idea of creating repeated images of the sole exhibit in her One Thousand Boats installation for his Cow Wallpaper. But worse was to come. In 1965 Kusama created the world’s first mirrored-room environment, a precursor to her Infinity Mirror Rooms, at the Castellane Gallery in New York. As man prepared to head for the moon, Kusama had uniquely grasped the public’s growing awareness of infinity. She confronted them with this unnerving concept through a seemingly endless environment. Only a few months later, in a complete change of artistic direction, avant-garde artist Lucas Samaras exhibited his own mirrored installation at the far more prestigious Pace Gallery. Distraught and dejected, Kusama threw herself from the window of her apartment."

6. hayao miyazaki: Akemi Ota and miyazaki met as colleagues at Toei Animation. i'll just quote from his book here, Starting Point -- you can download it from libgen here (http://library.lol/main/719E146A93417FD6C06A13F7F7687FBB).

"Animation work isn't something that is over when a certain amount is done. One has to pursue it until one is satisfied. That is why I have left family affairs and raising our children to my wife. She was a colleague when we were at Toei Animation, so she understands my work and how much labor is needed to complete a project. She had wanted to continue to work on her drawings. When we got married, I promised her that we would both have careers. Until our second son was born, I used to take the older one to preschool and meet him there at the end of the day. But when I saw our older son walking home half asleep, I decided that it was impossible for both of us to work. I still feel contrite about breaking my promise. But since then I have been able to focus on my work. With me not at home very much, my wife would finish up the housework and often do the things that fathers normally do [...] due to my wife's efforts today both of our children are able to to things for themselves. [...] I tried to be a good father, but in the end I wasn't a very good parent." While there are plenty of men who are absent / poor fathers and leave the burden of childcare to their wives, this qualifies as THEFT to me because 1) his wife was a fellow animator who had, presumably, wanted to make her own name in animation independently of his -- instead, she is a footnote and has been merely his collaborator, without being able to work on her own independent career 2) he promised her when they got married that she would be able to still have a career, and reneged on that to prioritize his own. maybe she even only married him because he made this promise? who knows. but he wanted both a career, and to be a father, so he went and got married to a fellow animator and had kids. But in order to achieve the former, his wife had to sacrifice her own animation career, and he failed miserably at the latter. That is theft of his wife's genius. Addendum: His son on his blog wrote that, "For me, hayao miyazaki gets zero marks as a father, but full marks as a director of animated films." (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/earthsea/blog/blog41.html) Also note how articles talking about miyazaki gloss over Ota's sacrifice: "At Toei, Miyazaki met Akemi Ota, an animator, whom he married in 1965, and who decided to stay at home when the couple’s two sons were young." (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/01/17/the-auteur-of-anime) She didn't decide to stay at home. He forced her hand.

7. leo tolstoy: the diaries of Sophia Tolstoy reveal that she "acted as copyist of War and Peace, copying and editing the manuscript seven times from beginning to end at home at night by candlelight after the children and servants had gone to bed, using an inkwell pen and sometimes requiring a magnifying glass to read her husband's notes." "She was a tireless secretary, taking dictation and copying out drafts upon drafts of the works that brought Tolstoy enormous acclaim." this was obviously all done by hand. this was because he had to have clean final drafts delivered to the publisher. (https://russophilereads.wordpress.com/2019/09/29/a-marriage-of-heaven-and-hell-inside-the-tolstoy-marriage/). for further discussion of his horrible treatment of her, see (https://www.rbth.com/history/330411-why-leo-tolstoy-was-terrible-husband, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/02/sofia-tolstoy-diaries) and their wikipedia pages. Choice facts & passages from her diaries: - he forced her to breastfeed all 13 of their children despite the agony it caused her - she was solely responsible for the management of the household as he was opposed to the governors / nannies most noble families had and believed this was all the job of the mother - With the aid of a special tray that enabled her to write propped up in bed, Sonya even managed to continue working on the manuscripts while she was recovering from an attack of puerperal fever that nearly killed her. Tolstoy, who was revolted by the process of pregnancy and childbirth, didn't stick around the bedroom once he had seen to the installation of the tray. (https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/19/books/the-wife-of-the-genius.html) - "All the things that he preaches for the happiness of humanity only complicate life to the point where it becomes harder and harder for me to live. His vegetarian diet means the complication of preparing two dinners, which means twice the expense and twice the work. His sermons on love and goodness have made him indifferent to his family, and mean the intrusion of all kinds of riff-raff into our family life. And his (purely verbal) renunciation of worldly goods has made him endlessly critical and disapproving of others." - “I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture, I am a woman . . . But the moment I am alone and allow myself to think, everything seems insufferable.” Anyway, this is all theft because she did not receive even a book dedication. war and peace has no dedication

8. henry russell: when Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin presented her dissertation for review in 1925, he dissuaded her from concluding that the composition of the Sun was predominantly hydrogen because it would contradict the current scientific consensus that the elemental composition of the Sun and the Earth were similar. this was despite the fact that her analysis showed that hydrogen was a million times more abundant than the other elements. therefore unfortunately because he naysayed her, her dissertation could not be accepted with this finding in it. so she "did what she felt she had to do" and, in the final version of her thesis, disowned that part, calling it "almost certainly not real" and "spurious". (https://physicsworld.com/a/cecilia-payne-gaposchkin-the-woman-who-found-hydrogen-in-the-stars/, https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1925PhDT………1P) however, 4 years later in 1929, he realized Payne-Gaposchkin was correct when he derived the same results by different means. In 1929, he published his findings in a paper that briefly acknowledged Payne's earlier work and discovery, including the mention that "[t]he most important previous determination of the abundance of the elements by astrophysical means is that by Miss Payne [...]". but his paper NEVER said directly that it confirmed that Payne-Gaposchkin’s entire analysis was correct, and that she was the first to discover that the Sun is mostly made of hydrogen. he also never stated in the paper that he had originally rejected that result in her thesis. Nevertheless, he was generally credited for the conclusions she reached. Payne-Gaposchkin's daughter wrote that throughout her life, she lamented her decision not to stand by her results. "In her autobiography Payne-Gaposchkin wrote “I was to blame for not having pressed my point. I had given in to Authority when I believed I was right…I note it here as a warning to the young. If you are sure of your facts, you should defend your position.”" Addendum: I should not have included struve and hertzsprung in this list. I misread something. they did not steal from her, only russell did.

My previous 40 question ask game has been picking up notes again, and you know what? I love making up these questions so much that I made more. Because why not.

Have some uncommon questions to help with developing your original characters! Feel free to send in some asks with some numbers–pick an oc, or I’ll pick randomly~

How does your character sleep? Peacefully, fitfully? What position do they sleep in? What is their typical bedding like?

Does your oc have dreams or nightmares? What are they like? Is there a recurring one?

How easy to annoy is your oc? Do they have common pet-peeves or are they stoic in response to everything? What is their reaction if the source doesn’t stop?

How does your oc view housework? Do they absolutely hate it? Do they enjoy having their surroundings neat and tidy or do they not notice?

Your oc has to make something for an art exhibition. What would they make? How terrible is it? Would they enjoy making it?

What is your oc’s vocabulary like? Does it match the way they talk? How would you describe their speech?

How would you describe your oc’s voice? Do they have an accent? Do you have any voice claims for them?

Is your oc more likely to follow instructions exactly, throw them out and figure it out on their own, or make it all up? What are the results like?

Is your oc afraid of touch or do they actively seek it out? Is there a reason for this? What are the exceptions?

How is your oc about medical care? Do they avoid any form of healthcare that they can, do they seek it out over every little scrape? Do they treat their injuries/illness all by themselves?

How competitive is your oc? Is every little task something that they can win, or are they just in competitions for the fun of it? Is there anyone they’re most competitive with?

How skilled at lying is your oc? How frequently do they lie? For what reason? What situations would be the exception?

What is your oc’s immune system like? Are they invincible to illness, or are they compromised completely from the slightest of dirt?

Does your oc do anything “just for the aesthetic”? Or are they completely practical in everything?

If you had to choose a single object to act as a symbol for your oc, what would it be? Why?

If your oc could only eat one thing for the rest of their life (while miraculously not suffering from malnutrition), what would it be? Does this match their favourite food?

How prepared is your oc? Ready for the worst no matter what, or completely lost in every situation? Would they have a medkit when it was needed? Would they have an umbrella if it rains?

How charitable is your oc? Or are they more stingy with their resources and money?

If someone was describing your oc to someone who had never met them, what distinguishing features would they mention? How would one identify your oc in a crowd?

Does your oc have any pleasure that embarrasses them so they keep it secret? Or are they open about all the things they enjoy?

What is your oc’s stamina like? Would they be able to run a marathon, or not run at all? What about walking/another physical activity? How are they with exercise in general?

How long can your oc stay focused on one task before they get bored? Do they constantly have to switch things up or do they hyperfocus? What sort of things is it the opposite for?

What is the most annoying sound to your oc? What’s the most pleasant? Is there any reason?

What smells bring back specific memories to your oc? What are those memories like?

How jumpy or easily spooked is your oc? Do they have a fight or flight reflex to being startled, or are they never startled at all?

How polite is your oc? Do they do everything with the utmost courtesy, or do they completely refuse to say please and thank you?

How flexible is your oc? Can they touch their toes or do they have trouble just sitting down because of how stiff they are?

What is your oc’s typical walking like? Do they speed-walk everywhere, do they take quick short steps or long paces? On their tiptoe, the sides or heels of their feet? How loud are their footsteps?

If your oc was in a video game, what would their idle animation be? (When the player stays still for too long, the animation that plays.)

What topics does your oc know the most about? Are these obvious or would these be surprising to others?

What time of day is your oc most awake? What about most tired? Do they get up at the same time every morning without need of an alarm, or is their sleep schedule all over the place?

What five ingredients would you throw into a cauldron to make a potion based on your oc? How would you cook/mix them? What would the potion do?

Describe your oc’s favourite environment. Urban or rural? Wild or controlled? What’s the climate like?

What would someone blackmail your oc with? Would they be successful in getting what they wanted?

How easily does your oc get attached to things? Does everything have a sentimental value to them, or do they see nothing as more valuable than its practical use? What about with people/animals?

How stubborn is your oc? Are they easily convinced of the opposite opinion, do they not agree but let it happen anyways? Or do they cause conflicts with their inability to budge in their decisions?

How much has your oc traveled? Why is this? Would they like to travel more? Or are they perfectly fine with staying home?

What signs tell that your oc is nervous? Do they fidget, is it in their expression or the way they say things? Or are they very skilled at hiding it?

How superstitious your oc? Do they end up following them ‘just in case’? Or are superstitions incredibly important to your oc? What are some that they believe? What about the ones they don’t?

We tend to think of it as a genre story now, I think–because it’s so good, and so unprecedented, that Tolkien accidentally inspired a whole new fantasy culture, which is kind of hilarious. Wanting to “write like Tolkien,” I think, is generally seen as “writing an Epic Fantasy Universe with invented races and geography and history and languages, world-saving quests and dragons and kings.” But… But…

Here’s the thing. I don’t think those elements are at all what make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so good. Because I’m realizing, as I did not realize when I was a kid, that Tolkien didn’t use those elements because they’re somehow inherently better than other things. He used them purely because they were what he liked and what he knew.

The Shire exists because he was an Englishman who partially grew up in, and loved, the British countryside, and Hobbits are born out of his very English, very traditionalist values. Tom Bombadil was one of his kids’ toys that he had already invented stories about and then incorporated into Middle-Earth. He wrote about elves and dwarves because he knew elves and dwarves from the old literature/mythology that he’d made his career. The Rohirrim are an expression of the ancient cultures he studied. There are a half-dozen invented languages in Middle-Earth because he was a linguist. The themes of war and loss and corruption were important to him, and were things he knew intimately, because of the point in history during which he lived; and all the morality of the stories, the grace and humility and hope-in-despair, was an expression of his Catholic faith. 

J. R. R. Tolkien created an incredible, beautiful, unparalleled world not specifically by writing about elves and dwarves and linguistics, but by embracing all of his strengths and loves and all the things he best understood, and writing about them with all of his skill and talent. The fact that those things happened to be elves and dwarves and linguistics is what makes Middle-Earth Middle-Earth; but it is not what makes Middle-Earth good.

What makes it good is that every element that went into it was an element J. R. R. Tolkien knew and loved and understood. He brought it out of his scholarship and hobbies and life experience and ideals, and he wrote the story no one else could have written… And did it so well that other people have been trying to write it ever since.

The “getting it done in an unconventional way” method.

The “it’s not cheating to do it the easy way” method.

The “fuck what you’re supposed to do” method.

The “get stuff done while you wait” method.

The “you don’t have to do everything at once” method.

The “it doesn’t have to be permanent to be helpful” method.

The “break the task into smaller steps” method.

The “treat yourself like a pet” method.

The “it doesn’t have to be all or nothing” method.

The “put on a persona” method.

The “act like you’re filming a tutorial” method.

The “you don’t have to do it perfectly” method.

The “wait for a trigger” method.

The “do it for your future self” method.

The “might as well” method.

The “when self discipline doesn’t cut it” method.

The “taking care of yourself to take care of your pet” method.

The “make it easy” method.

The “junebugging” method.

The “just show up” method.

The “accept when you need help” method.

The “make it into a game” method.

The “everything worth doing is worth doing poorly” method.

The “trick yourself” method.

The “break it into even smaller steps” method.

The “let go of should” method.

The “your body is an animal you have to take care of” method.

The “fork theory” method.

Belle has Stockholm syndrome because she falls in love with the Beast, her kidnapper.

Woke:

Stockholm syndrome was coined to slander a woman who had been in a hostage situation but openly criticized the poor police response which recklessly put her in more danger and escalated the violence. She was then belittled and discredited publically by the police for this.

[ID: Gif image from Disney's Beauty and the Beast with Gaston leading a large group of villagers down the road holding a torch. The atmosphere is dark.

Wikipedia screenshot containing the following:

According to accounts by Kristin Enmark, one of the hostages, the police however was acting incompetently, with little care for the hostages' safety, which forced the hostages to negotiate for their life and release with the robbers on their own. In the process the hostages saw the robbers behaving more rationally than police negotiators and therefore developed a deep distrust towards the latter. Enmark had criticized Bejerot specifically for endangering their lives by behaving aggressively and agitating the captors. She had criticized the police for pointing guns at the convicts while the hostages were in the line of fire and she had told news outlets that one of the captors tried to protect the hostages from being caught in the crossfire. She was also critical of prime minister Olof Palme, as she had negotiated with the captors for freedom, but the prime minister told her that she would have to content herself to die at her post rather than give in to the captors' demands. Ultimately, Enmark explained she was more afraid of the police whose attitude seemed to be a much larger, direct threat to her life than the robbers.]

Excerpts from “See What You Made Me Do: The Dangers of Domestic Abuse That We Ignore, Explain Away, or Refuse to See” by Jess Hill

Here are some other facts you should know about Nils Bejerot: He had a major influence (this involved founding the "Swedish National Association for a Drug-free Society") on Sweden's zero-tolerance approach to drug use.

And he wrote "Barn, Serier, Samhälle" (Children, Comics, Society), basically the Swedish version of "Seduction of the Innocent"; an infamous anti-comics book by Fredric Wertham that led to the Comics Code Authority.

Bejerot described comic books as a "significant mental hygiene and cultural problem that concerns us all."

femicide? as in of infants? very often carried out by women. who taught me and the boys i grew up with that my body and what i put on it were things to judge and comment on sexually? women. Who makes up the majority of clinical staff in any given medical system and perpetuate the issues you highlight which reside there? women.

ANTI-CAPITALIST AFFIRMATIONS

i am allowed to spend my time creating things, even if they are not beautiful.

there is no such thing as a "real job." all forms of work are real and valid.

there is nothing that i need to accomplish to be worthy. i am already worthy.

doing nothing is good for my soul.

i am not defined by what i produce.

my worth cannot be measured by my paycheck, my job title, or a list of professional or academic achievements.

i do not need to monetize my hobbies, it is enough to spend time doing something i love.