Word Count: 1781 Words

This time of year is always very nostalgic for me bc I used to be the Token Gentile at an office and every few months there'd be a Jewish holiday and my friend would be like "Hey, I need you to do Gentile things for us" and I'd be like hell yes dude. Gentile Things often meant I'd sign things in exchange for a few dollars on venmo but Pesach was a special time for me because it meant everyone gave me boxes of pasta, cereal, and other baked goods. The first time my friends were like "Hey for reasons we won't bother getting into we're going to give you all of our bread" I was like, it is a powerful responsibility but as an Ally I cannot refuse. Best time of the year, frankly

But I can’t talk about climactic sentences in Tolkien’s works without mentioning what is, in my opinion, one of the best things that has ever been written in the English language.

And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn. And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.

This is unparalleled. This gives me chills every time I read it. It may be my favorite quote in all of Tolkien’s works, except that choosing a favorite quote would be an impossible decision to make. It’s so inspiring. It’s so moving. It’s so heroic. And obviously, it’s a moment of pure eucatastrophe. Rohan had come at last.

And the moment that Pippin hears the horns of Rohan:

When the dark shadow at the Gate withdrew Gandalf still sat motionless. But Pippin rose to his feet, as if a great weight had been lifted from him; and he stood listening to the horns, and it seemed to him that they would break his heart with joy. And never in after years could he hear a horn blown in the distance without tears starting in his eyes.

I LOVE LORD OF THE RINGS SO MUCH

Anyway, post-canon/resurrected/reborn/survival AU/Halls of Mandos Fëanor is much more interesting to write because that's the cooldown time, that's the time for character development, for consequences, for despair, for moving onwards. Some people are so caught up in their own burning sense of single-minded purpose that they need to burn out before they can even begin to change.

Surviving under late stage capitalism is hard, especially when you’re out of spoons and you’re lucky if you have a plastic knife. We’re here to help. 

The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food You Can Make So You Don’t Die is a community-built, vegetarian/vegan guide to getting food in your facehole when you’re suffering from depression. Or other mental illnesses or physical illnesses or *waves hand generally at the state of the world* anything else. 

We’ve made it free on our website because life sucks enough without having to give Jeff Bezos money, but we also do have a paperback copy available for sale over there too, since we also need to eat.

https://nightbeatseu.ca/the-sad-bastard-cookbook/

Ko-if link is on my page

As is my commission info

[ID of final image: screen cap of a nun with the subtitles "Please, please, do not come crying to me."

End ID.]

Whenever I read LotR and reach the battle between Eowyn and the Witch-king, I get the impression that the reason why the prophecy loophole works isn’t that the Witch-king is unkillable except for some illogical weakness nobody had thought about yet for misogynistic reasons, but that the Witch-king himself derives so much of his power from the fear he instills in others and from his own belief that he is unkillable. Eowyn doesn’t fear him, because she doesn’t fear death. When she twists his words right back at him, she’s not trying to exploit a prophecy loophole, she’s just making a play on the double meaning of the word «man» with fairly standard battlefield bravado.

But, crucially, it gets the Witch-king wondering if there might be an actual loophole in the prophecy. He starts doubting his own invincibility. There’s no logical reason why a woman might be able to kill him if a man cannot, but prophecies are tricky things. What if …

And this is what undoes him, in the end. This last minute doubt. The Witch-king, deep down, believes that Eowyn can kill him, thus making it possible for her to do so.

I have a lot of Thoughts about the framing of classic fantasy stories that are actual specific published works as Ye Olde Folktales of no particular origin. especially given the most common modern understanding of “original fairytale” as “didactic story intended for children”

(same goes for stories where the most common modern understanding of the story is based on one particular published version)

like. I don’t know. Beauty and the Beast owes a lot of tropes to earlier tales that occupy the nebulous ~folklore~ space we usually assign it to, but the actual story itself is a novel. a full-on fantasy novel intended for adults, with a known author (Gabrielle Suzanne Barbot de Villenueve), published in a definite time and place (1740 France)

the most popular modern version of Cinderella- with the fairy godmother, glass slipper, single ball, and so on -was written in 1697 by Charles Perrault. that’s not the oldest known version of the story, and DEFINITELY not the only one out there, but it’s the one that most informs our cultural ideas about what Cinderella is. in the west and honestly, in most of the world

(luckily most people know by now that The Little Mermaid started life as a story written by a particular author. but it sometimes falls prey to these misconceptions, too)

this is all really hard to articulate, but it just feels weird to say “Beauty and the Beast was meant to teach girls to accept arranged marriage!” when you wouldn’t try to sum up, say, The Fellowship of the Ring so neatly. or “well, in the ORIGINAL Cinderella, birds peck out the stepsisters’ eyes!” when that comes from a version published in 1819- over a century after the version we’re most familiar with today

I think it also takes away important context when analyzing these stories, to completely sever them from the very specific points in history that created them and make them seem the product of a murky, generic Olden Time™ that never existed

To maintain proper focus while writing, I like to make my characters smokin hot.

-JRR Tolkien (probably)