#but it's really tangential

[aipilosse]

I've seen people say Maedhros doesn't get any characterization, which is understandable. But I really do think people minimise or underestimate the amount of information we get about him through the texts? I think we get fairly enough to establish a good impression of what he must be like, from passages scattered throughout the works, rather than a few descriptive adjectives that a few other characters get. I want to write more about this in detail, but I would like to know what you think about the whole characterization debate since I disagree that he doesn't get enough. I think he gets much more characterization than both Finrod and Fingon, with the former getting much narrative focus rather than characterization and the latter getting neither.

Anon, I was just recently thinking about people minimizing or underestimating the amount of information we get in the texts in general so this ask came at the perfect time!

...but I don't think saying that Maedhros doesn't get any characterization is an understandable statement at all, actually. So I guess, yes, I totally agree with you that there's clear traits we can get from the Silmarillion. I also agree that he gets more than Fingon, who suffers a bit I think from having inconsistent explicit and implicit characterization in the Silmarillion. For instance, we're told:

No oaths [Galadriel] swore, but the words of Fëanor concerning Middle-earth had kindled in her heart, for she yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will. Of like mind with Galadriel was Fingon Fingolfin’s son, being moved also by Fëanor’s words, though he loved him little.

Fingon yearns to rule a realm at his own will, really? I would argue we then see little political maneuvering on his part and he spends the rest of the story playing the role of the heroic prince -- bold and eager for battle, but with no indication he would prefer to be king. This is made even more obvious when you consider that his younger brother *does* go off to rule a realm at his own will. You could explain this by saying the journey across the Helcaraxe squashed any desire to rule on Fingon's part if you wanted to, but I suspect this is rather an inconsistency likely borne out of the evolution of Fingolfin and Fingon into separate characters.

Honestly, we don't really see Galadriel acting on this desire to rule a realm at her own will until the Second Age, but in her case that can be explained by the patriarchal society she's in.

Anyway, back to Maedhros and Finrod! I think Maedhros may get more explicit characterization; there's the notable line, "for since his torment upon Thangorodrim his spirit burned like a white fire within, and he was as one that returns from the dead," and several others referring to his fiery spirit and vigilance against Morgoth. But I do think that due simply to being the central character in several more storylines, Finrod might have more overall characterization? But I just realized I’m definitely including the Athrabeth and the Lay in that calculation, and I’m a lot less sure without those works. But he still has plenty of characterization in the Silm! Founding Nargothrond, finding the Edain, throwing his crown on the ground, killing a werewolf with his teeth and bare hands -- the narrator isn’t saying “Finrod was ambitious and curious, and saw himself as a man of honor” but that’s what his actions say.

For either Maedhros or Finrod, anyone who says there's little or no characterization we can draw from the Silmarillion is talking out their ass tbqh. They have plenty of agency and 'screen time' as it were, unlike characters like Amrod and Amras, and don't suffer from conflicting characterization like Fingon.

Which brings me to a larger observation I suppose; I see the idea that 'we just don't have any details' about characters floated pretty often. Not only is this not true for many characters, but I've seen this used as a reason why female characters aren't written about, which is such a threadbare excuse? If you're not interested in a character there's no shame, but I would say Aredhel, Morwen, Nienor, Galadriel, Idril, and Elwing all have the same amount or more characterization as Maglor yet he’s far more of a focus of the fandom than any of them. Again, this isn’t to shame anyone into liking female characters (a very ineffective strategy even if that were my goal!) but just to say, hey, be honest about why you like the characters you do. 

I had this whole thing written up about why people would even say we don’t have any details or why fandom acts like the Silmarillion is this dense unknowable book from which hardly anything can be derived, but it got out of hand and really my own annoyance with this phenomenon is a mix of very real observations about how hard it can be to talk about things with people steeped in fanon (like I literally will have no idea what’s going on sometimes just because I don’t know where every single Feanorian is at all times according to agreed upon fanon), how there’s this deep history of misogyny in fanon that influences how people talk about characters to this day, how this layer of false complexity deters even knowledgeable people from talking about the stuff they’re interested in, and then there’s my petty, bitchy self who’s annoyed because there’s a lot of works out there I don’t like and don’t understand because it seems to me counter to the material I am actually a fan of, which. The fact that fandom does not cater to the likes and dislikes of one Aipilosse is not a real problem lol!

I think I’ll just say that this pseudo-reality where there’s tons of people who *insist* we can’t know a thing that we can very much at least draw reasonable conclusions on isn’t a good thing, no more than insisting that there’s only one way to interpret a thing and if you don’t you’re a bad fan is a good thing  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#thank you for the ask! #I tried to keep this on the rails #but don't know if I succeeded #maedhros #fingon #finrod #the question of whether Maedhros or Finrod has a more clear characterization in the silm is actually very interesting #oh there's more here about how what's agreed upon as canon is not actually canon and how incredibly alienating that can be #but it's really tangential #maybe I'll add more later... #or write a second post

[royalarchivist]

Fit: Did I steal anything else before I have to go to work? Did I steal anything else from you?

Phil: Just my heart.

Fit:

Phil: Anyway—

Fit: Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil. Calm down, calm down, calm down, calm down, calm down, calm down, calm down. You need to calm down, you- I don't know what they're putting in the— Alright, I'LL SEE YOU LATER PHIL! YEP. I'll see you later! See you later.

Phil: [Cackling] I was like, "What's the thing I can say that would absolutely try and fluster Fit?" [Laughs] That's the first thing that came- [Laughs too much to finish his sentence] Yes. [Fist pumps] Yes. Just testing him. Just testing him. I wanted to see if Pac got brought up in the conversation, I wanted to see if he'd be like, "Hey, I'm- I'm sworn- I'm- I am taken—" I wanted to see if he'd say it, but he didn't. He didn't.That's interesting, Fit. That's interesting. Roommates, right? How far does the rabbit hole go on this one? Just roommates? Just roommates?

#Philza #FitMC #QSMP #Hideduo #FitPac #Tangentially #Fitza #<- not really but u know #I have so many meetings today but this was a quick one to transcribe #December 1 2023 #Phil loves teasing his friend but he's very onboard with the Fit/Pac agenda #Phil #Fit

[theminecraftbee]

if you'll forgive the rare mention of shipping from me. okay. so my brain LOVES generating weird, slightly fucked-up aus. and so. okay. sometimes i think about the joke that jimmy is the oblivious protagonist to a harem anime or a dating game in most of his smps. which is obviously a fandom joke more than anything else but like, he DOES have a bunch of these ships. and then i ALSO think about the sometimes-valid, sometimes-invalid way people complain about shipping warping his and other people's characters. (for the record that's just how fandom works shipping or not shipping i take a neutral stance on this, it's just important for the au idea.)

so my brain came up with: the jimmy dating sim au. in which jimmy suddenly wakes up and his life is a dating sim. and at first he's... very very jimmy about it. he preens. he LOVES the fact the world suddenly seems to revolve around him. it's GREAT. he can see dialogue options and he still somehow sounds like an idiot when he talks to people but that's fine because he still chooses the BEST OPTIONS. he's doing GREAT. this is the BEST THING THAT'S EVER--

although. hm. it's... a little weird the world is revolving around him? grian and joel aren't being mean enough actually, which seems like a silly thing to complain about, but like, look, he likes it when people are mean. and tango is silly and sweet but he's--he's not normally that focused on jimmy. he's a project guy. and scott is--look, it's weird he's not flirting with anyone else, right? like, that's weird? and, and okay, he's... not sure how to name what's going on with fwhip but there's not enough animosity, and whatever martyn is doing is like, look, jimmy's used to being shot down more on this one, and--

and once jimmy starts seeing it he can't stop seeing it. the world's warped around him. he's the main character in a dating game. every time he picks an option that makes one of his friends (his friends!) like him more, it's like another little piece of their personality is chipped off of them. and as much as he loves being the center of attention, he misses being mocked. he misses people paying attention to other things. he misses the bits that are being sanded off. he doesn't want to be the one to break his friends. he misses the relationships they had, sharp edges and all, because goddammit, he likes that kind of relationship.

but he doesn't know how to stop it.

he doesn't know how long he can go down someone's route before the changes get irreversible.

and so jimmy sets out on a journey to figure out how to break the dating simulator he seems to have gotten stuck in and get his friends back to normal. before it's too late.

ANYWAY IF I HAD TIME AND/OR MORE EXPERIENCE WITH VISUAL NOVEL GAME ENGINES IMAGINE--

#empiresshipping #trafficshipping #<- for blacklist this isn't. really a shipping post. you know how it is. #jimmy solidarity #anyway periodically this pops up in my head again #and i'm like. man i don't know how exactly to write this. but i would love it if it existed #so i am breaking my usual silence on anything tangentially related to shipping to bring it to you all. in case you all also like it.

[manichewitz]

why is it that 90% of criticism of the song of achilles just boils down to not accepting the conventions of romance as a genre and wanting it to simply be a different book than what it is? because seriously if you can’t get with the fact that the song of achilles is a queer romance story first and a retelling of the iliad second you’re never gonna make a criticism of it that’s interesting to me. if i wanted to read a book that was accurate to the source material then i would just read the iliad. if i wanted to read a queer romance unfolding on the backdrop of a mythical war i would read the song of achilles. if you dont understand the difference between those two things then your beef with that book is just a waste of time to me

#tangential but i think tsoa had a little bit of a hunger games effect #where it inspired so many knockoffs of itself that it retroactively is percieved as worse than it actually is #also at the end of the day its obviously not meant to be about the iliad its about tragic queer love in ancient greece #it frustrates me a lot that people really just cant understand that lmaooo #.txt #alex talks #books #bookblr #the song of achilles #the iliad #the classics #patrochilles #achilles/patroclus #ya #ancient greece #ancient rome #greatest hits

[beatcroc]

pest control TWO!!!!! heres the first one

adn heres the obligatory bonus bc i can't help myself :')

#i already threatened that little basard twice in these i may as well make good on it #pizza tower #peppino spaghetti #fake peppino #the noise #fp ''oh god wait that is not a real rat and also tastes awful'' moments. he doesnt actually have any interest in eating that thang ok #even if seeing a small scampering little guy like that WILL activate his prey drive without fail #peppino loves it he thinks it's the funniest shit in the world for fp to go after noise. so he is always encouraging this. #but anyway yeah. fp is *really* not the one noise should be worried about. #arting #pizzaposting #i still have lots of tag room thjis time so im gonna do some tangential nonsense rambling. e #fp gotta be like crazy good at hunting i think. not just for strength and predator instincts but also bc like #he doesn't have much in the way of a scent or body heat or anything that would give him away as an alive thing #not to mention he's uh... not particularly organically-shaped a lot of the time #so esp. to smaller prey that don't like... memorize a landscape; if he holds very still he's like completely undetectable #total ambush king. though i'm sure hes also very good at #persistence and pursuit hunting since he has peppino's speed and no way of getting muscle fatigue. ultimate beast #fortunately he doesnt care that much and doesnt really need to eat so hes not devastating the local ecosystem or anything #except for the rats.

[hoofpeet]

Wip for a thang

#hoof draws #eyestrain ?? maybe #no context for this other than it's tangentially a hoofoverse spoiler . except not really b/c it happens in a dif timeline #neway . them

[uncanny-tranny]

The funniest thing about my transition is slowly becoming even more of a spitting image of my dad. It sometimes makes me double-take in the mirror because I look like my dad if he were cooler

#trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq #ftm #nonbinary #how i am cooler than my dad: 1. long hair 2. face piercings 3. fagswag #the stereotype is that people go on testosterone to look like anime boys but i did it to look like Some Dad #i want to look like charlie twilight saga unfortunately (fortunately) #(guess what i'm watching. this shit is so so so so so funny. funniest movies made by man) #i was told pre-medical transition that i look like the spitting image of my dad by somebody who knew him as a teen and :') #i wonder what they would say like 2.5 years on testosterone thiugh #also tangentially-related but i had like. the biggest infatuation with kristen stewart when i was younger and i don't even know why #i think i just thought she was really pretty and i liked how deadpan she was in the movie i watched featuring her (lmao)

[irregularbillcipher]

so god forbid i’m seen just as an average human being

#bill cipher #andrew kryptos #gravity falls #not gonna tag flatland because it seems too tangentially related but you guys get why i draw their mortal designs grayscale and victorian #for anyone going 'what's going on with baby bill's chest???' that's a victorian scoliosis brace #they're mostly covered by clothes usually but with a low collar you would be able to see parts of it #i usually translate his mild irregularity to scoliosis #just realized there's no full drawing of canon era bill in his stupid used car salesman suit. ah well #just know the jacket has a smilar triangle shape to the jacket he wears in the last flatland era drawing and has triangle buttons #you guys have seen it i posted that design before #a good portion of these drawings is just me going 'hee hee victorian fashion fun.' loved drawing andy's stupid big coat #also-- if you notice there's a jump in bill's clothing quality from the pictures where he's around 8 to the one where he's a teen #that's chuck's doing. he was like 'well if you're going to work in a tailor shop you should look the part >:(' #and bought bill a 'uniform' so he had some nicer clothes. bill's folks don't really bother getting him nicer clothes most of the time #but if someone else is paying they won't turn it down and he picked up on that

[echosong971]

I DONT KNOW WHAT LIES OF P IS BUT KEEP DRAWING THAT BOY PLEASE I BEG

OKAY o7

#when you are rly good at killing but are also just a little guy sometimes <3 #tangentially related #i need more P and Gemini fancontent AUGHH #their dynamic is everything to me <3 #i love all of gemini’s lines through the game he’s so great #also #! #here’s just a short explanation for ya of the game: #Lies of P is a Soulslike video game based around the story of Pinocchio #you play as the puppet Pinocchio (colloquially referred to as “P” by most of the fanbase including myself) #and you have to go through the City of Krat and lie to protect yourself #while you deal with the current Puppet Frenzy by striking down whatever gets in your way #It’s a REALLY fun snd amazingly written game 11/10 would highly recommend <3 #echosong971 #echo asks #echo answers #art #digital art #fanart #lies of p art #lies of p #p #pinocchio #lies of p pinocchio #gemini #lies of p gemini

[trans-axolotl2]

Fuck the DSM. Seriously, fuck the DSM.

The DSM is and always has been used primarily as a method of rationalizing mistreatment of the people it labels as "deviant." When you look at the history of psychiatry, it becomes clear that things like drapetomania, protest psychosis, hysteria, and homosexuality as a disorder were not just thrown into there randomly. Rather, it showcases the power of the DSM: labeling and categorizing ways of being as mental illness opens up new paths of incarceration, social control, and curative violence. I need people to understand that the modern DSM still works like this: these classifications of madness/mental distress/neurodivergence into psychiatric labels encourage society to treat madness/mental distress/neurodivergence with the apparatuses used to eradicate "deviance." Diagnosis is not neutral.

As mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, we deserve access to more explanatory models of madness/mental illness/ neurodivergence than what the psychiatric language of normalcy and disorder offers us. Whether this looks like rejecting diagnosis, embracing varying cultural understandings of mental experience, or any million different ways of interpreting our bodymind, we deserve the option to move beyond clinical language that tries to convince us not to trust ourselves. We deserve to view ourselves wholly, leaving room for all our experiences of madness/mental illness/neurodivergence--the meaningful, the terrifying, the joyful, the exhausting. We deserve to have our own relationship with our madness, instead of being pushed to view ourselves as an inherent "danger to self or others" simply by existing as crazy.

Here's another truth: I hate the DSM, and I still call myself bipolar, a diagnosis that came to me through psych incarceration. While I wholeheartedly reject the DSM and the system intertwined with it, I simultaneously acknowledge and believe that many of the collections of symptoms that the DSM describes are very, very real ways of living in the world, and that the distress that they can cause are very very real. When I say fuck the DSM, I don't mean "Mental distress, disability, and neurodivergence aren't real." Rather, I mean that the DSM can never hold my experience of what it is like to be bipolar, the meaning I derive from experiencing life with cyclical moods. The DSM can't hold within its pages what it's like to see my mood cycle not as a tragedy or disaster, but instead as an opportunity, a gift, to grow and shift and go back to the same place over and over again, dying in winter and blooming again in spring. The DSM can't hold the fact that even though I experience very, very real distress due to those mood cycles--they're still mine and I claim that as something that matters to me. I call myself bipolar as a shorthand to tell people that I experience many things both extreme high and low, but I do not mean the same thing when I say "bipolar" as a psychiatrist does.

When we build community as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, I want us to have room to share, relate, and care for each other in ways that isn't calling to the authority of a fucked up system with strictly defined categories. I don't want us to take those same ways of thinking and rebrand it into advocacy that claims to fight stigma, but really just ends up reinforcing these same ideas about deviance, cure, control, and danger. I dream of the day when psychiatry doesn't loom as a threat in all of our lives, and I think part of that work requires us as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people to really grapple with and untangle the ways we label and make meaning of our minds.

ok to reblog, if you want to learn more about antipsychiatry/mad studies check out this reading list.

#personal #antipsychiatry #antipsych #mad pride #mad studies #disability justice #disability #prompted by. idk. being tangential to certain spaces lately #seeing ppl who r forming communities focused on neurodivergency #in a way that really just. reinforces and legitimizes the dsm #and constantly refers to the authority of the dsm as a reason why they r right #not going to get into the specific discourse of the week except to say that something i feel strongly. is that we get to have different #explanatory models. but also that we r allowed to critique explanatory models as a community #like i hate the indigo child shit. i think its full of white supremascist dogwhistles #that's not an explanatory model i feel like the autistic community should ever support u know #anyway. getting offtrack

[agent-8449]

CEPHALOPHORE

As the cycle takes my head! {A vitriolic work of art} (This decapitated apathy!) {God made me this way in a morbid exchange Of theatrics and heavenly fate} I'm just not the way that they want me.

#negatives au #cjverse chatroom #chonny jash #cccc #my art #A cephalophore is a saint depicted holding their own severed head. Their own.... curious. #This is only tangentially symbolic btw #Nemesis really did decapitate a man/a version of his Whole #While Phobos and Deimos watched. #spiritual sucessor to my IMMANENTIZATION piece!

[royalarchivist]

Vault Worker: Here you have the weapon, armor, everything is ok!

Pac: Is there someone strong and bald there to help protect me? No? You won't understand this, that didn't make sense.

#Pactw #Pac #Hideduo #FitPac #QSMP #<- Tangentially #Fallout #HELLO??????????????????? #April 14 2024 #Thank you for double-checking my translations! I really appreciate it #flashing #epilepsy warning #Translated

[angermango]

gonna post some reference scribbles for how i draw the Huldra Brothers (mix of observations from official canon art/renders and headcanons/artistic liberty) as well as expose my "anime-era influenced my art" side

#god of war #huldra brothers #brok #sindri #gow #gow brok #gow sindri #>>mango(t)art #toggling between the last two sindris is really funny it's just a flipbook of devastation #this is not officially really for that one GOW AU i said i had knocking around but imma tag it anyway bc is tangentially related ig #other brother au (gow) #ugh my new tablet fucks up the colors they look so vivid as i draw and then i transfer to another screen and boom destination desaturation

[plounce]

elle and emmett from the legally blonde musical are one of those m/f couples that i think work best as a woman and a man purely because their relationship and how elle wouldn't stay at harvard for him because she has grown to want true respect & success more than a man she loves' approval/desire is like so important to the themes of the story and it's the whole point and it's part of what makes them so good. on the other hand emmett could be such a hot butch lesbian it's crazy i want to eat drywall when i think about emmett forrest but a butch lesbian BUT it simply would not improve and in fact would detract from the themes of the story. they have to be m/f

#chirps #tangentially. i think that a trans man casting for emmett would be really great for a lot of reasons #the scene of elle buying him really nice men's formalwear and finding clothes that he likes and feels good in... #'take it like a man' in general would have such another layer of meaning and love to it #anyway. there would be a really interesting dimension to their relationship in terms of elle embracing hyperfemininity & emmett being trans #and how their respective relationships with & presentations of gender impede them in the upper-class Professional world of harvard #man that'd be really cool... that would add soooo much to the show... #Emmett Forrest. You Must Be Transgender Now. #tbh thinking more. t4t f/m elle/emmett would be so incredible but also so fucking devastating for certain things. BUT THEY TRIUMPH!!!!! #<- all my tags aren't me trying for a 'best of both worlds' option wrt casting. just me thinking abt how the roles gender plays in this sho #and the ways different casting choices could shine light into different facets #the 2022 west end revival had them both as black which also is really great stuff i think... i wanna find a full boot for that

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

In other news, I finally found a nice nerdy motif that includes eyes to paint on my mask. I wanted a simple, reasonably beginner-friendly design that would read well on the mesh and that'd be easy to fix when it inevitably gets too badly scratched up by, you know, being repeatedly hit with a steel sword. (And in the meantime it's gonna get cool appropriately silvery details as the paint gets scraped off.)

Progress pics under the cut for those interested.

First, redrawing the symbol from a very low-res old rulebook scan, printing it out, and cutting out a stencil. There is a very nice high-res transparent png of this holy symbol available in the BG3 game files, but sadly it's a very detailed, fancy, redesigned version with way too many complicated thin lines to work for this.

The first step is just black and white primer, airbrushed on, kinda messy and blurry, as expected.

Then, freehanding in both black and white to sharpen it up and bring out all the details. Moonmaiden, guide my hand! etc etc etc.

And there you have it.

#obvs the mesh is actually really far from my face so the eyes only align... sometimes #but in general i'm really pleased with the effect and how it all came out #had to go back and look up what my tags even were jeez #swash #hema #fencing mask customisation #forgotten realms #selune #dnd #c'est moi #and very tangentially #baldur's gate 3 #prayer circle for regular oath posting #let's goooo

[hoofpeet]

do you have a favourite flavour of slop

#mailbox #tangentially the store near me has a really good selection of mexican snacks and stuff and they're closinggg </3 #the coconut milk drinks w/ jelly bits would also belong on 'favorite slops' list probably and i'm going to miss them...