Author: hegetsquirrelwrangler

call me heget

Everything started with Lord and once King Orodreth. Faron held onto this fact. Of the many lords who once held a kingly title back in Beleriand, the blame for his current predicament must start with Lord Orodreth. Faron tried to make it a non-malicious thought. Lord Orodreth was only the inception of this disaster, not the sole cause. Lord Orodreth felt a loneliness in his heart for the feeling of high winds against his face as he perched on the bare cliff of a mountain. The former King of Nargothrond expressed this longing for his strenuous childhood hobby of emulating a demented hyrax or overly ambitious goat within hearing range of other former lords of Nargothrond. Those former lords were the aforementioned pack of fools to whom Faron was friends with. Lord Orodreth only spoke of nostalgia, of how he had chased excitement in his youth, as opposed to more rational pursuits like diving into the ocean or equestrian competition. Sadly, it was a well-documented truth that idle words with disastrous consequences were not out of character for a Noldor prince.

“An expedition up the Pelóri Mountains,” Faron’s friends had said. “A fine adventure,” they said. “A chance to explore new locations, allevement of tedium and routine, time to spend with dear companions.” Pretty words. The final stone to the tower of proof that his friends were champions of folly, thought Faron. And he allowed himself to color that particular thought with all the bitter viciousness that his friends deserved. And he a fool for not thinking this at the inception of this disaster.

His personal involvement in this far-ranging folly began in his garden. As where he ended up had little in common with his garden, the least of which that his garden was warm and pleasant and by virtue of its accommodating altitude did not hamper his breathing, this odd fact was also something Faron pondered over.

themardia:

One thing I’ve been seeing a lot on Tumblr from older fans is the notion that fandom is wankier/more toxic on Tumblr than it ever was during the supposed good old days on LJ/DW and man–that is just not true. The current wanks are different in that they’re co-opting social justice language and have a weird focus on “purity” or whatever, but ship wars have been happening since literally FOREVER (check the old school Harry Potter fandom, or the Ray Wars in Due South, or literally every major fandom that has ever existed).

People in fandom have always been insanely over the top about their ships. What’s happening now is that we’re not able to f-lock and stick to our own corners the way we did before. So, for example, if I’m a fan of Spock/Uhura in Star Trek AOS, if I go out on Tumblr and search by that pairing tag, I’m just as likely to see awful racist garbage as I am to see a nice piece of fanart to reblog. So yeah, that is a mess–but it’s a mess based in the structure of the platform we’re using, not because the good old fandom days were filled with people that were just INHERENTLY more tolerant and “nicer” than current fans are today.

I’m just really suspicious and wary of the nostalgia for the good old days of fandom, because I think that it’s not only inaccurate, it completely dismisses the progress that has been made in fandom since. You know what we didn’t have back then? A widely accepted content warnings system for triggering content. Open discussion of racism/sexism/homophobia in fandom and fic, and how we can and should be doing better. The good old days a) weren’t that good to begin with and b) you can’t try and bring back the stuff you liked without also acknowledging the parts of fandom that were awful.

One day I’ll make a long list of tropes that really hit the spot for me, that I just can’t get enough of, but some of the biggest ones, I’ve noticed are as follows:

Lady and Her (Consort)Knight, be it the original or villainous version. And I really enjoy when the villains may be absolutely evil but their one good point is their devotion as the couple. Not quite the Bodyguard trope, definitely the Loyalty/Fealty but going both ways, the Courtly Love without the Spiritual Infidelity, a Battle-Couple where it’s not required that both be Fighters, but appreciated. That if female character is not  the higher status politically or socially, she still has the greater emotional control and the one making the overarching plot decisions, the one deferred to because she makes strategies while her Knight handles tactics. Add in some Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask and Silk Hiding Silk, make both of them secretly dorks, introverted, that they are each other’s biggest fans, have it understood that the overarching plot goal of saving the world level importance is still more important to both of them than their devotion to each other, even if the romance is a close second – and don’t go heavy at all on any Forbidden Love. I’m not a fan of Star-Crossed Lovers as much as I am the ‘we’ll get together once this Plot is taken care of/the focus is less on how impossible it is for them to be together as it is how hard the thing keeping them apart will be to fix but the story at least fools you into thinking it’s doable.’ Can gender-invert but the personalities and the scale of logical versus emotional should be the same.

Similar but Platonic related trope – Older Over-protective Responsible Sibling Secondary Character who tries and often fails to protect main character younger sibling from getting themselves killed for plot (Usually the Older Brother of the Lady, and thus in conflict with the Knight), who will snark in that delightfully passive-aggressive must-be-stoic because I Have to Be Composed and Level-Headed Because I’m Surrounded By Idiots – but left to their own devices is even more reckless or stupid, the Lawful Child, the promoted to parent, the ‘my longest lines of dialogue are the shovel-talk I am giving to Knight’, the Failure Knight.

Also, Reunited in Death. I’m definitely a sucker for that trope.

arcaneintellect replied to your post:
Third week with my favorite pothole and its cheery…

Oh my friend, come to New Orleans. Land of the perma-potholes.

I don’t have pictures of the average roads in town- or where I was this morning (Robstown) where half the width of the road is missing and the rest is potholes. When the local news station has photo contests for people to send in the worst pothole road of the week. But this is a road that was freshly re-paved (several times over the years) and had this one spot (as it has for years) reopen after the rain. And in went that jaunty traffic cone in the center of it (which happened with another pothole about ten feet up this road about two or three years ago). And then it was still there untouched a week later. And then we got rain. and then another week later and it’s still there and the cone is too. The pothole never truly disappears; the photo was more my amusement that this time they left the traffic cone in.