Subject: Crap, why am I getting Goop flashbacks
Author:
Posted on: 2021-04-03 21:21:08 UTC
They are pretty much the #1 nonsense "health" product peddler IMO.
Subject: Crap, why am I getting Goop flashbacks
Author:
Posted on: 2021-04-03 21:21:08 UTC
They are pretty much the #1 nonsense "health" product peddler IMO.
Hi everyone! Just checking in again. Honestly don't remember the last time I did so but wow! New Board!
I thought about you all today because I am currently teaching English in Japan and today we were finalising our schedules for each department at our school and I realised there were nine members of the English department, plus me, so I have finally become the dreaded Tenth Walker ;P
(And then I spent the department meeting mentally casting my coworkers as Fellowship members and realised I spend most of my time talking to Legolas.)
Anyway, since I tagged this as a plug: I don't remember if I ever mentioned it before, but in 2015-2016 I wrote a retelling of the Hobbit in live time of the Quest for Erebor. I recently made a Carrd collecting the information about it in one place. If you have about 20+ hours to kill and you don't mind slowburn Bilbo/Thorin in a mixed books-movies canon setting (mostly book plot, movie aesthetics, plus xianxia-inspired Rivendell, plus a random cameo from Agent Eledhwen in her "canon extra" form) with a Durins Live ending, here it is.
Also, just ran this concept through the Discord but thought I'd like to hear more thoughts on it: consider... an inconvenience store in HQ. What would it sell? What would your Agents buy?
Good to see you! Welcome to the New Board!
Re. inconvenience store, I've been reading a book about the history of "health food" faddism in America, so "dehydrated water" springs to mind. There was apparently a thing called "Zola, the Wonder Water" that one could order from a magazine in the 1920s, I think it was, and the stuff was dehydrated to save on shipping costs. Yeah.
"What the buyer got was a little powder marked 'concentrated water'. It cost only a dollar. And from it, using 25 to 40 gallons of ordinary everyday water, the buyer could make 'the best of life-giving beverages'. (Actually, the powder proved to be five cents worth of Epsom salt.)" —Deutsch, Ronald M., The New Nuts Among the Berries, Bull Publishing Co., 1977.
Naturally I take any "current" information with a grain of Epsom salt, given the publication date, but the historical information is fascinating in that it's so very familiar. The same wild ideas about health and the same "get well quick" schemes seem to come around again and again, often propagated by celebrities with dubious or zero medical credentials, with the public none the wiser. It's incredible.
So! Sounds perfect for an inconvenience store. ^_^
~Neshomeh
So... they sell you water... and you add more water...? That's incredible. How did they get away with that?
-looks over at Silicon valley bros trying to sell 'raw water'- Oh, I see.
This Board is very nice! I like the expand post option. And the fact that all the old posts are preserved! (Though admittedly it is embarrassing to see my posts from 2008 again)
You know, all those things with shame-based marketing, designed to solve "problems" that weren't problems before someone made a product to solve them, chiefly aimed at women? Not that men escape completely—consider the multitude of muscle-builders and, ahem, other enhancement products out there that require a guy to feel inadequate to buy them.
I got to wondering this morning if "tired of those dark/puffy circles under your eyes?" isn't less insane than "tired of that unsightly dimple under your nose?" I mean, yes, sunken or swollen eyes can be a sign of trouble, but doesn't everyone have those circles, and don't they always look a bit different from the surrounding skin, even when a person is perfectly healthy?
And "ladies, that hair on your legs is gross!" is definitely more insane than "men, that hair on your face is gross!" You could totally market facial shaving products that way. It itches and gets in your mouth, it gets sweaty and causes pimples, it traps food that bacteria can feed on, it totally repels your significant other! Get rid of it! Buy now! Never mind that all of that is only a problem if you don't practice basic hygiene!
So, yeah, I'm gonna say the Inconvenience Store is the PPC's source of personal care products from around the multiverse that people from some cultures can't live without and people from other cultures think is complete BS if not downright dangerous. And they're probably right. ^_~
(Alternatively, Phobos suggested that an inconvenience store simply never has the exact thing you're looking for, and the closest thing they do have is garbage.)
~Neshomeh
They are pretty much the #1 nonsense "health" product peddler IMO.
It's, goodness it's been a while. Hello! I should tell you that as the result of confusion over whether Dr. Niamh was a caustic Irish blonde or a cheery Vietnamese lady, she's now both. It seemed the most entertaining approach.
You should be careful about calling yourself a Tenth Walker, though. That can go badly wrong...
...
Lily Winterwood was chatting with Legolas. She wasn't, of course - that would be impossible, The Lord of the Rings was fiction and Agent Christianne would get quite sardonic if she admitted otherwise - but with nine other members of the English department, she had long since assigned them all a Fellowship name.
A sudden thought made Lily break off mid-sentence with a snort of laughter. Legolas raised an eyebrow at her, but she waved it off.
"Sorry," she said, "I just realised I'm totally the Tenth Walker." She shook her head, thinking back on all the badfic she'd read on that exact premise. "Don't worry, it's just-"
There was a sound which can probably only be described as WHOOM, and Lily vanished.
~
Nenya Quende didn't often visit PPC HQ any more, but made an exception for special occasions. The flier for the new Inconvenience Store that had come through her old ICEP mail had drawn her in, and on the appointed day she'd joined the large number of agents wandering the corridors trying to find the bloody thing.
She tried all the usual tricks for navigating HQ: listening to music, hunting earnestly for the Pool, banging her head against a wall and so forth. It took her an embarassingly long time to try simply looking for it, but when she did, she was rewarded with a neatly-painted sign hanging on a nondescript door.
Nenya pushed the door open (the sign was slightly too large for the frame, clattering against the sides), and winced as the strobelike flicker of a malfunctioning fluorescent light hit her eyes. Stepping through (the door failed to shut properly behind her), she took her first look at the PPC's Inconvenience Store.
A line of shelves stood directly in front of her, blocking any view of the rest of the store. On it were stacked vast quantities of lembas, each cake sitting in an open leaf packet. Curious, Nenya tapped on the closest piece: it was rock-hard, utterly stale.
Walking around to the left, Nenya discovered that the rest of the aisles ran at right-angles with the lembas shelves. She had to turn back on herself and walk down a narrow gap to reach any of them, and a quick glance ahead showed that each aisle ended flush with the far wall.
"I guess you get what you signed up for," Nenya murmured, strolling down the row of shelves. There were a handful of agents in there, each studying one of the products with a bewildered expression. She passed a Time Lady (leafing through a copy of The Andalite Chronicles in incredibly tiny print), a lizard-man of some sort (trying to hold a pair of two-handed kitchen scissors), and what seemed to be a domestic cat (glaring up at the cat food, which had been placed on the very highest shelf).
The final agent had been examining a crate of sodas, prominently marked as "Decaf! Sugar-free! No CO2! We don't believe in colourings or flavourings!", but straightened up as Nenya approached. Something about him - possibly the lack of a flashpatch - made her think policeman, and she tensed, but he ignored her and touched a hand to his ear.
"Say again?" he asked. "She's done what?" A pause. "How do you 'accidentally' send yourself to Middle-earth?"
Nenya turned to the shelf and picked up a replica of one of the Shards of Narsil, listening curiously. "I think this is a bad line," the agent said. "That sounded like 'She called herself a Tenth Walker and then turned into one'." A beat. "You're kidding."
Nenya choked, then winced as the sharp edges of the shard cut her. She dropped it back into its box of identical pieces and turned away, sucking at her fingertip. Behind her, the agent's voice grew increasingly exasperated.
"It's not that, what's her name, Vemi again, is it? ... no, I guess she did. ... yes, of course I'll deal with it. Right away. Bye."
The policemen pulled out a Remote Activator and tried to open a portal, only to be met with a warning ping from the device. "Naturally the store is damped," he muttered, then turned and stalked towards Nenya. "Excuse me please, Special Response coming through. Honestly, kids these days... 'I don't know why I'm singing Call Me Maybe at Legolas, I was just making a joke'... eesh."
Nenya watched him go and chuckled to herself. "I've got to tell Rosie about this," she said, and turned to pick something up from the shelf. "Maybe I'll take her a present, like this... oh, rubber duck teapot." She squeezed the pot, listened to the forlorn squeak it made, then put it back down. "Or maybe I won't."
Happy April Fool's! I'm sure the DIA will have you back home in no time.
hS
So, I want to name a sorrel mare "Little Red."
My options for "red" (but not necessarily of fire) seem to be caran, coll, and naru. Caran seems the most legit Sindarin, since the other two are annotated as Noldorin? Hiswelókë also suggests gaer as a normalization/reconstruction of goer, which I like because it seems to denote copper-colored or ruddy, but gaer has a couple other meanings and might be confusing? Also, it's not very pretty. And goer is even less pretty.
As for "little," there's the suffix -eg, but that isn't pretty at all and the only example I saw suggests it's a bit derogatory. Fortunately, there's also the adjective pîn. Cool.
So, er, how do I put them together? I tried to work it out myself using this guide and, picking whatever feminine suffix sounded best, got Pingaranel/Crambineth, Pingoleth/Colbinel, Pinnarwil/Narubinel, or, for the heck of it, Pinaereth/Gaerbinel. Are these right? I suspect I must have missed something somewhere. For instance, I rather like Pinnarwil, but I'm not convinced the double-N is allowed. And changing ara to ra in Crambineth is displeasing, so maybe one could skip that step? And I'm kinda asking an adjective (red) to stand in as a noun (red one), so do I have to do anything to reflect that?
~Neshomeh
I've been playing with Sindarin lately, so this is well-timed.
Caran is a good generic word for red; ross is also a nice one (as in Maedhros), as it actually means 'copper-haired'. Russet is one of Tolkien's translations for it. I'd avoid goer altogether: it looks like it originated in a draft name for Caradhras, meaning it's been directly replaced by caran.
-eg/-ig is a perfectly nice diminutive - Tolkien used it for everything from 'thumb' (atheg, 'little father') to (in earlier form) 'robin' (cilobinc, 'chirpling'). But as you say, pîn is also available.
Handily, Sindarin adjectives can sometimes function as nouns - Ardalambion uses morn, 'dark', as an example, so colour words fit nicely there. You actually don't need a feminine ending at all - see for example Finduilas Faelivrin - though I admit that almost all Sindarin women's names have one. Finally, adjectives usually come after nouns, but in names that can be modified.
As for the names: Pinnarwil is absolutely fine if you accept an adjective ending in -u, which doesn't look terribly Sindarin to me (because it's Noldorin). You definitely don't have to contract caran to cran (Caranthir didn't!); I'd actually expect 'carn' to be more likely (so Carmbineth). Ultimately, all your names look like plausible Sindarin.
I'm imagining now that Maglor is naming this horse - in fact, he's naming several, and using them to make fun of his family.
Finally, I'd like to suggest Caraneth, from caran+neth, meaning 'little red sister', or Nethellos from nethel+ross, 'red sister'. It just sounds like exactly the sort of thing an elf would call her horse.
hS
PS: Is there context? I get the feeling 'ross' was mostly used by Noldor, being adapted from the Quenya, so you might avoid it in other contexts.
There's that set of nine horses rescued from "Ring Child." I may someday maybe want to do something with one of them, so a description and a name are needed. I suspect Alice and Nandaro (a.k.a. Delroch), as herd leaders, are the ones doing the naming/translating into words.
And I just wanted to see how far I could get with it while I was thinking about it. {= )
(The rest of the nine are available for anyone to play with except for the bay gelding claimed by Agent Suicide. I'm informed Su calls him Polynikes: "after the Spartan warrior who once tormented his master, Alexandros. Why? 'Now he has to do what I say.' And the fact that it's a gelding makes him snicker." ^_^ )
Anyway, thank you! Good to know that guide is mostly reliable, and I am amused to know that Maglor's horses, if they aren't called after musical concepts, are poking fun at his family. "Nimmoril" is lovely. I like "Caraneth," too.
If it helps, naru is also given as narw, though it's still Noldorin?
~Neshomeh
(Sorry, still one of my favourite jokes.)
It looks like when I wrote Alice, she treated the Herd as an extended family, and didn't use names but rather descriptions (Delroch is only named when she's actually speaking for roman's benefit). So the natural names she'd give would be ossified descriptors - which indeed 'Little Red' is.
Of course, if the sorrel was irritating, she might wind up as "Rossarn" - "Red pebble", as in "stuck in my hoof and always bothering me". But I'm sure she wouldn't deserve that. ^_^
hS
I bet you make awful dad jokes. ^_~
I remember that story! But I don't remember if I ever mentioned that my headcanon is that Alice and Nandaro when she's pleased with him become a pair, and have a daughter called Nyellë who is at least three years old as of 2016? I looked up probable coat-color genetics and decided she's a smoky black, which I like as an inversion of her grandsire Shadowfax's misty gray.
Anyway! While we're at it, there's also a gray mare explicitly mentioned in "Ring Child," and the idea lodged in my head for her is something like "Mist-upon-the Hill." (I imagine she's a shy type.) The best option for that seems to be Hith-am-Amon, but since the preposition shares the same sound as the first syllable as the second noun, could that be elided to Hithamon? Or would that necessarily lose the meaning, becoming "Misty Hill" instead?
~Neshomeh
But also yes. In fairness, they largely consist of taking things overly literally, which is a huge part of the PPC's mission statement, so I'm in good company. ^_^
I don't think you did mention that, if only because I would have worked it into "Courtyard Life" if I'd known! (Incidentally, if Nandaro is indeed Delroch, then he probably needs a rename on the Wiki.) I like the name - "little bell", right? But also a decent Quenya onomatopaea for a whinnying horse - "nYElle!" ("Nandaro" is clearly Sindarin, but presumably not "Stationary valley" - "Noble Dale", perhaps?) Another incidental - it would be entirely appropriate for Nandaro to call Alice "Alissë" as an endearment - "al+lissë" = "happy + sweetness/grace", with the whole coming out as something like "bliss".
Given the general landscape naming technique, "Misty Hill/Hill of Mist" would definitely be Amon Hîth. I think Hithamon would be naturally read as "hill-mist" - which is a fair synonym for "mist upon the hills".
Which I notice is also a direct synonym for "Fog on the [Barrow-]Downs". Don't think I didn't see what you're doing.
hS
Yes, you did. And Nyellë, too. Which are Quenya because "Delroch" is from Valinor and music because Maglor was supposed to be his master, except the one in the story was a character replacement, so it's a nod to the real Maglor.
But Alice is from Middle-earth in the Third Age, so she'd be inclined toward Sindarin.
I am bad at working my stray ideas into actual things I can point to and say "look! a thing!" >.< Trying, though!
Alissë - awww.
Fog on the Barrow-downs - huh. I'm glad you saw it, because I didn't! Good to know I was being that clever. ^_~
~Neshomeh
I remember nothing. ^_^ Technically it seems 'nandaro' is a Middle Quenya word, and would probably be 'Tantaro' in later writings, but that sounds a bit too close to 'Ta-ran ta-ra!' and fox-hunting for me. It's entirely plausible Maglor would have used an archaic/uncommon form anyway.
It is a sad fact of Middle-earth that the only people outside of Valinor who routinely used Quenya were the flippin' Numenoreans. Tolkien even tells us the Sons of Feanor had their own dialect of Sindarin, so even they weren't speaking The Best Language all the time! It's all very frustrating.
hS
See, she's supposed to be the daughter of Shadowfax, right? So she's from Rohan. Would she actually be inclined toward Sindarin, or would she be more inclined toward Rohirric Westron? Should I be drawing on Old English for names given by her? {X D
Really, you could make a case for anything depending on how those nanites of hers work. So maybe the question is what Makes-Things would think of when programming them. If the idea was to fit her out as an agent, maybe, far from merely making her telepathic, he loaded her with all the major languages of Arda! She's a walking translator!
~Neshomeh, laughing.
... they seem to be split between Modern and Old English.
Modern: Shadowfax, Snowmane, Lightfoot, Firefoot
Old: Arod ("quick"), Stybba ("stubby"), Windfola ("wind-foal")
We can add Brego from the movies (OE, but named for a person), and Felaróf from before Eorl rode south. And 'mearas' itself is simply OE 'horses'.
There's some hint that the modern names are actually translations within the Red Book - Tolkien Gateway talks about Snowmane's "proper Rohirric name" being Snawmana, and cites Tolkien's "Guide to the Names...". So a plausible case is that they have Old English names which are routinely 'modernised' by and around outsiders.
Coming back to Alice... I don't know if J&A realised this, but it's actually a perfect name for a mearh. It apparently comes from Adelaide, which means 'noble kind'. Wiktionary is helpful in telling me that her OC "Rohirric" name should be made from cynn ("kin") and either Aethele or Haeleth (noble/hero). Aethelcynn or Cynaethele would work, being modernised as Athelkin or Kinathil.
She's probably best to stick with Alice, is what I'm saying.
hS
Behind the Name pointed me in another direction for the meaning of that element. The postulated proto-Germanic origin of heid is haiduz, and it has several meanings, including "kin" but also including "manner, character, -hood," as BtN suggests. Looking at its Old English descendants suggests the suffix -hād. So, Æþelhād or Æðelhād might be the most Old English version, translated "Nobility" and modernized perhaps to Athelhede. Or, then again, maybe Æþelnes, as Wiktionary says is the Old English word for "Nobility."
... Or just Alice. But any way you slice it, yes, very appropriate indeed!
Anyway, probably not going to pursue the Old English angle for horse names. Rēad + ling would be fine, for example, but I like the Sindarin options better. ^_^
(Just for fun, "Polynikes" translates nicely, too! Poly + nikes = many + victories = lhaew + (tûr + plural) = lhaew + tuir = Lhaewduir or Lhaewthuir. Probably the former, to be less crunchy?)
~Neshomeh
When the dust and Glitter cleared, Lily found herself standing not in the staffroom of the Japanese high school she was teaching at, but rather in a garden, looking up at a very familiar series of buildings.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said. “It was a joke!”
Still, Rivendell was Rivendell, and she was not going to look a gift trip to Middle-earth in the mouth. So she wandered off through the gardens, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible for someone dressed in a striped blouse and pencil skirt.
The moment she stepped inside, she was — for lack of a better term — accosted by a dark-haired, grey-eyed elleth. “You,” said the elleth, and Lily blinked at her in horror and recognition. “What are you doing here?”
“I tempted the Ironic Overpower?” wondered Lily, making a face. Well, at least it doesn’t seem like a Don’t Panic! situation. No need to worry about dredging up the Westron words for things. “Eledhwen?”
The elleth nodded. “My wife received an incredibly odd call earlier,” she said. “Someone on the Special Response team told her our writer had accidentally dropped herself into Middle-earth.”
“It was on the mind,” Lily conceded. “I’d just done an interesting thought experiment stemming from the consequences of the Durins surviving the Battle of the Five Armies, and in this particular iteration, Thorin and Bilbo would be romantically involved, which would mean the One Ring could be discovered earlier because it would make a more concerted effort to corrupt Bilbo as the Consort Under the Mountain, which then meant he would probably consider it his responsibility to take the Ring to Mordor, which would necessitate a completely different set of Nine Walkers because a majority of the original Nine Walkers would be children at the time —”
“I know,” snapped Eledhwen. “I was there. You had me quizzing Bilbo on Sindarin.”
“Not as bad as missions, right?” wondered Lily with a sheepish grin. “Is… is your wife here?”
There came the sound of a zither, and moments later another elleth stepped out from behind a conveniently placed pillar. “It’s the D.O.R.K.S,” explained Christianne. “I was introduced to Himdor and the other extras as Cellinnel. Not sure how to feel about it.”
“You introduced me to your family as Ailee,” Eledhwen pointed out. “Turnabout is fair play.”
Lily stifled a chuckle — over the years, she’d grown less inclined to humour the assumption that Middle-earth or any other Western-based fantasies should only have white characters, and so even Eledhwen herself had gone from looking more like Evangeline Lilly to looking more like Li Qin. But that’s what happens when characters grow with you — they keep changing and shifting and surprising you at every turn.
“Right.” Christianne coughed, setting down the zither she’d been carrying and rummaging through her Elvish robes. “Better get our author back to Japan before she breaks canon.”
“I already spent a year retracing Bilbo Baggins’s journey; I don’t need any more adventures,” agreed Lily. “It was honestly a joke, okay? I have this new coworker who’s only a couple months younger than me, and she’s supposed to be my supervisor, but I can’t help but think ‘oh my god, she is a baby’ because she’s younger and shorter and looks like a cinnamon roll —”
“She looks like baked goods?” wondered Eledhwen, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s a figure of speech.” Lily waved a hand. “Anyway I thought about how she was very much Pippin, the youngest in the Fellowship, and the short grumpy teacher was Gimli, and the tall grumpy teacher who has big ‘you shall not pass’ energy was Gandalf, and the gossipy teacher was Legolas —”
“Who’s Frodo in this analogy?” asked Christianne, pausing her rummaging.
“I guess the nice teacher with the bob cut?” Lily shrugged. Eledhwen sent her wife a ‘stop indulging her’ look.
Christianne pulled out a portal thingy. “I mean I guess the whole fish-out-of-water feeling would be the same whether you’re a Tenth Walker or the annoying gaijin teacher,” she said as she punched in the relevant codes, “but we’re doing this as a favour and we’d really like to get back to being retired in New Caledonia. So if you don’t mind…”
“Right.” Lily nodded, as the portal flickered into life ahead of her. “One more question, though: are you two happy?”
Christianne and Eledhwen looked at one another. “Considering the stuff you were planning on inflicting on us, I guess we’re lucky to have gotten off relatively scot-free,” said Christianne after a moment. “And we got to get married, which was pretty fun.”
Eledhwen’s ears flushed pink in agreement.
Lily smiled, looking between the two of them. “You know, someone on the Board mentioned that they developed a crush on you, Ellie,” she teased.
Christianne rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, because the awkward steadfast type is so endearing when paired off with a sarcastic and loquacious bastard with a hidden sad backstory. You’re very predictable, you know.”
Lily opened her mouth in mock-offense. It’s not everyday your own characters call you out on your own writing. But of all the folks to do it, it might as well have been her Agents.
Christianne gestured to the portal. “Now you really need to go home so we can go check out the new Inconvenience Store. Scram.”
Lily chuckled. “Congrats on the marriage,” she said as a parting shot, before stepping through the portal back to Japan.
Editing to add some notes: considering that the mission which they basically Have A Lot of Feelings about how they got burned out by missions and the ever-changing tide of badfic and their own traumas getting dredged up by aforementioned badfics is technically unpublished because it's a YOI Suefic and I'm a bit known in YOI fandom and would thus not like to start drama about it, I figured this might be a fun closure-nod that can be more... public? But yes barring whatever hijinks you put them in since I gave you and Zingenmir permission to use them, they're functionally retired and married in New Caledonia haha.
And ahaha about Dr Niamh; that's genius. Happy April Fools to you too!! Maybe I should just check in every April Fool's lol
~Lily
I am sure they have a lovely little house down in the French Quarter (when not moonlighting in Imladris). Fantastic.
Re non-white Eledhwen: and why not? Even if Tolkien had unambiguously described the Noldor as 'pale' (which he didn't), this Li Qin would easily qualify.
How would you feel about me splicing the two ficlets together and throwing them up on my site? Just so it's hosted somewhere for the future.
hS
I guess over the years I've become less and less willing to indulge Tolkien on some of the more eeeehhhh stuff like "dilution of Numenorean blood leading to the degradation of Gondor's might" or "all the prettiest Elves are ~fair~" etc, but the beauty of his text is that its framing device is a translation of a different text.
And that's what keeps me coming back to Tolkien! Plus now that c-dramas are getting more popular in English-speaking fandom I can make jokes about how Rivendell is basically a chiller Cloud Recesses.
Incidentally, Bea Hayden is who I'd pick as Christianne.
Absolutely, go for it! Incidentally, while we're on the subject of heartwarming, I'm looking at the last mission now which I appended an epilogue about a midsummer bonfire from the POV of an Intern named Maddie:
Maddie hummed at that. “Eledhwen Elerossiel and Christianne Shieh, huh,” she mused. “I’d only really ever heard whispers about them, you know. Their long years of mutual pining, their slow burn romance. Isn’t it sweet? They could get married now!”
The tips of Jeeves' ears turned red. “I think they said they already were,” he said. “At least, um. In the Elvish sense.”
“Is that like knowing someone in the Biblical sense?” wondered Nurse Hearth.
“I didn’t bother to ask,” replied Jeeves. “But they were good Agents. And they’re still good people. I think they’re planning to move out here, find a flat. Enjoy civilian life.”
“Yeah,” agreed Maddie. “Honestly, it’s no wonder the two of them have been the face of PPC recruitment for the past couple of years now. They way they work together and care for each other is just,” she clenched her fist, “so cool. Kinda reminded me of why I signed up in the first place.”
Another burst of Glose light filled the air, then, and if Maddie averted her eyes just so, she could properly appreciate the way the bonfire seemed to dance across her friends’ faces. She then looked across the way, and saw the two of them. Eledhwen Elerossiel and Christianne Shieh, whirling together through the other dancing couples on the other side of the square. There were flowers in their hair, and Eledhwen was laughing at something Christianne said.
For a brief moment, they looked back at Maddie, and Maddie felt herself waving. Eledhwen raised an eyebrow, looking at Christianne, who waved back.
Then they briefly pressed their foreheads together, and vanished into the dancing crowd, and Maddie couldn’t help but smile even long after they were gone.
It’ll be all right in the end, she thought, as the bright flames licked at the darkening Midsummer night. As long as there are people willing to do so, the Canon will always be protected.
Thank you so much for the adorable epilogue, because it reminded me that back in 2019 I finally returned the long, long ago favour of fanart you did me:
Club Aujourd'hui, New Caledonia, with Christianne and Eledhwen right at the top of the dancefloor. They're very cute together. ^_^
(The other couples are Ix & Lottie, Derik and Gall, and - of course - Dafydd and Constance.)
Back to Tolkien (because I will never pass up a Tolkien opportunity), the really good part is that the Red Book is supposedly a Gondorian copy of the original, so all the Numenorean chauvinism is probably just their addition. It's notable that the Kin-strife was explicitly caused by Gondorian racism against non-Numenoreans... Gondor is just racist, and Tolkien-as-author doesn't really condone it. (I mean, heck, the evillest thing Men ever did was try to invade Valinor, and it was pure Numenoreans in the direct Line of Elros who did it!)
As to ~fair~... did you know there are 112 uses of the word in the Silmarillion? :D Most of them, surprisingly, are of places and objects, and as for the ones about people... y'know, I've just looked through all 112, and I can't find any instances where I'd parse fair = pale. He uses it in connection with pale hair sometimes, but just as often with dark. Aredhel - who is actually described as white, and nicknamed because of how white she is - is only called 'fair' once, when Eol is looking at her from a distance. Perhaps most notably, Dior becomes fair when he puts on the Silmaril. The one maybe-exception is Tar-Miriel, who is "fairer than silver or ivory or pearls", implying a paleness component, but even then... I agree it's a poor choice of word, and dramatically overused (there's only 66 'beaut-' words, for comparison), but at least he doesn't seem to be deliberately invoking pale skin.
(Hilariously, Sauron-as-Annatar is described as putting on a 'fair hue' that makes him seem 'both fair and wise'. What, er, what colour do you need to paint yourself to look particularly wise? o.O)
hS
I see that E has somehow managed to get C into a dress for the occasion. I wonder what bribes and favours went into making that happen :'D
Yes, I definitely think the Numenorean greed for land especially with regards to Harad, Umbar, Harondor etc got a bit downplayed, and the Red Book being a Gondorian copy would probably explain that haha! The books focused a lot on greed over shinies, but I personally wonder how the 3rd Age could've gone if Gondorian imperialism hadn't soured the Easterlings against the rest of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth.
I do agree that ultimately using the term 'fair' doesn't necessarily equate to pale, but we have all been sort of conditioned as readers of fantasy to make that connection, especially with stories like LotR frequently using dark-vs-light, black-vs-white imagery. And yes, to be fair (haha), Sauron and some of the Enemy do "look fairer and feel fouler", which is a little bit of a textual pushback, and the Silm I feel has a bit more grey morality compared to LotR... but again, despite all of this, readers of the work can often make assumptions, and the existing film adaptations don't do much to dissuade those assumptions. I'm ultimately glad that Tolkien fandom (here and elsewhere) is becoming more open to a diversified portrayal of Middle-earth, though!
(I'm cautiously excited about the Amazon series? They did a pretty good job with Good Omens in my opinion but I am a little bit amused at them saying they wanted to up the rating... I hope this doesn't mean full-frontal Gollum :'D)
Incidentally, since I really do enjoy and miss talking Tolkien with you: I've been worldbuilding a modern Middle-earth for fun and giggles; would you be interested in seeing the notes?
... SunAndMoon made the same point when I first posted it. I observed that Constance Doesn't Dance, so there was clearly a lot of coercion/pestering involved in this evening. It may or may not be Valentine's Day, though why Dafydd would care I have no idea.
Gondor: I think the biggest difference with non-racist Gondor would be them not driving the Dunlendings out of not-yet-Rohan. Given that they'd just defeated Sauron, they'd probably still have been in charge of the region, but they'd have a much higher population. By not constantly invading Harad (sorry, 'South Gondor', pfftyeahright), they'd have a secure southern border along Anduin - the Haradrim have no reason to dislike them, at least once it's clear the era of slavery is a few hundred years dead with Numenor - which would let them focus their attention East.
It's tricky to say what would have gone on with the Easterlings - were the earliest invasions from Rhun (ca. T.A. 490) unprovoked, or a reaction to Gondor's expansion? Ultimately, the East was firmly under Sauron's control for most of the age, so it's hard to see how the likes of the Wainriders wouldn't have showed up anyway. Not expanding north-east would give Gondor a better defensive line (along the Emyn Muil/Dead Marshes/Morannon), but less defensive depth.
The big change is probably the death of Ondoher in T.A. 1944, which led to the appointment of the barely-eligable last two Kings of Gondor. Ondoher's armies were attacked by both the Wainriders and the Haradrim... without the racism, he might have been able to focus on the Wainriders alone, and the Line of Kings might not have been broken. Which puts rather a spanner in Aragorn's whole deal.
Fairness: totally agreed that the text lends itself to assumptions (though Saruman the White, the black walls of Minas Tirith, and the spooky white Minas Morgul all stand against them), and the movies really leant into them. I'm positive Amazon will be more diverse, but it's hard to know whether it'll be even slightly Tolkienesque.
I am always interested in seeing notes. ^_^ I am also available by email if you're a fan of drawn-out conversations where you need to poke me occasionally to get a reply.
hS
If we go with the assumption that non-imperialist Gondor was not invading the South or the East, could we also posit that, say, non-imperialist Gondor would have encouraged trade between the South and East with the North and West during the years in which Sauron was said to be defeated? I don't recall if Tolkien ever established any significant contact between the North&West with the South&East outside of wars and Gondorians thinking the Southrons/Easterlings were savage warlord tribes (yikes). So if non-imperialist Gondor was giving the South and East access to goods and ideas of resistance against the Enemy, could we have seen greater resistance against Sauron in the East once he declared himself again? (Also was that not the Blue Wizards' job ahaha)
Anyway, none of that doesn't mean Wainriders wouldn't attack Gondor. I mean, there's also the possibility that outside of Sauron or Angmar's control, the Wainriders wanted to expand their stomping grounds westwards. So even if the Kingship of Gondor remained with Ondoher and his kin because they only needed to focus on the Wainriders versus Wainriders and Haradrim, there's a possibility the heirs of Ondoher could still be killed off in future battles with Angmar or the Wainriders. Or there could be a new Great Plague and the Men are all freakin' plague rats...
Fairness: The movie definitely played up the assumptions versus the books, but I have to admit the books insisting on terms like "Black Speech" and "Black Numenoreans" doesn't sit well with me either haha /am unrepentant Queen Beruthiel stan
Art: I can't see Dafydd or Christianne caring about it being Valentine's Day, haha. Maybe the club had a drinks discount for couples....
Notes: I shared the doc with you before I went to bed last night! I sent it to the email we shared for the Silmaril Sue cowrite. Feel free to make comments and correct my Sindarin/the few spots of Quenya. I'd be especially interested in what you think of the period dramas a modern Middle-earth would have ;P