i just saw the tag “canon complicit” instead of “canon compliant” and im laughing its like “canon is a criminal act that i unfortunately support with this fic”
One of the lawyers currently prosecuting Alex Jones got interviewed on knowledge fight. He talked about how he had to watch 150+ hours of Infowars content as background for the case.
He talked about how he had to take regular breaks because he could feel himself passively absorbing information against his will.
I, like many autistics (and, from what I've seen, like my friends the ADHDers), absolutely suck at finding things. Set it down on my desk, and poof, it's gone. If I'm looking for something I haven't seen in days? No luck.
But recently, my dad taught me a trick--don't look for the thing. Ask if what you see is what you want to find.
Looking for the pink sticky notes in your drawer? Don't just aimlessly go "where the fuck are my pink sticky notes?"; instead, examine each thing and say "what's that? Tape. What's that? A pen. What's that? A candy wrapper. What's that? OH IT'S MY PINK STICKY NOTES!"
Same concept for finding a certain book on your bookshelf. "Where's Lord of The Rings?" isn't very helpful; going "That's the Hunger Games, that's Cinder, and that's LOTR" is.
Same concept for food in the fridge. "That's milk, that's eggs, that's the cheese I was looking for".
Same concept for basically anything you're looking for. I don't know 100% why it works, but I'd have to guess that by eliminating the general "sweep around" type of searching and forcing yourself to actually look, your brain can't do the weird little "let everything fade into the clutter" thing that a lot of ND brains (and some NT brains!) do.
I hope this can help someone! :D
By the way! BBC Merlin, in its ongoing quest to achieve ren faire levels of historical accuracy, used Actual Old English as the magic spell language. They got a professor to do a lot of the translations, though they didn't spend much effort on the pronunciation.
There are two ways that this is very funny if you watch the show while knowing OE. One is that usually when they do the "wave your hands to smash your enemies around" type spells they're literally saying very simple stuff like "jump back" and "fall." The other is that whenever they have a long incantation to read, they say vaguely related stuff for a sentence or so and then just transition into reciting Beowulf.
Too much praying directly to the Valar and not enough praying to their Maiar for their intercession
but if i don’t hyperfixate i’ll get depressed and die
i love the silmarillion cause it starts with a group of deities chilling to lo-fi beats and it gets progressively more intense like at one point an elf literally fights off a werewolf with his teeth and it's not even the most dramatic thing that happens
Bilbo was declared dead while he was away in the Hobbit (and had to do a bunch of paperwork to get declared alive again) but there’s no indication he was formally declared dead after leaving the Shire, even though most people assumed he had died.
Therefore I posit: having a missing person declared dead in the Shire requires the consent of their next of kin. Whoever Bilbo’s next of kin was at the time of the Hobbit (possibly Otho? I’m not sure) had him declared dead at the first opportunity but Frodo refused to ever do it.
Frodo had anxious hobbit bureaucrats knocking on his door every couple of years like ‘Mr Baggins… blease… it’s been 10 years… he was eleventy-one… can we fill out his death certificate yet’ and Frodo was like ‘absolutely not’.
Early on he genuinely couldn’t bring himself too but after a while it was more that he enjoyed irritating the local magistrate’s office than anything else.
Fuck it, posting the glass eye fic I’ve been sitting on for a few months
•••
Katara didn’t trust Zuko as far as she could throw him, and based on past experiences, she couldn’t throw him very far without waterbending. Not that she’d hesitate to waterbend at him if he tried anything- and at this point, she was just waiting for him to slip up.
Which was why she was immediately ready to water whip him off the side of the temple when she heard Sokka’s terrified shriek. Okay, so maybe she didn’t exactly have proof he’d done anything, or even that he was anywhere near Sokka, but she ran towards the noise, water pouch at the ready, planning the best way to toss him out a window anyway-
And it was Zuko! She let herself have the vindication for a moment. Just a moment. Then asked “Sokka, what did you do?”
Look, she hated Zuko’s guts, but he didn’t look like he was actively hurting anyone right now, staring at Sokka in shock and clutching his face (the scarred side, she noted).
For good measure, she repeated the question at Zuko, because Sokka had screamed and he didn’t usually do that for no reason.
“I was just getting dressed!” Zuko protested, halfway between confused and afraid. “And he just came in and started screaming!”
Sokka made a strangled noise and gestured emphatically at Zuko, which cleared up absolutely nothing. “He- he- his- I-“
“Sokka!” She snapped. “What happened?”
Zuko lowered his hand a little and Sokka let out another half yelp. The firebender glared, then winced a little, still not uncovering his face.
“Wait, Sokka, did you hit him?”
Katara was a responsible person, who disapproved of hitting people on principle. She was not frowning at Sokka because she was jealous.
“No!” Sokka managed to get out. “Zuko- he- his eye fell out!”
Oh.
“Sokka...” she sighed. “Are you high again?”
“Wait-“ Zuko cut in, looking a little less confused (Katara would be angry with him for interrupting later, when she was less desperately perplexed). “You were freaking out because I took my eye out?”
“You... you what?” Katara was now matching Sokka’s confused horror. “You took your what out?”
Zuko lowered his hands, and yep, one eye. One eye and one not-eye, because Zuko only had one eye, and an empty eye socket, because what in Tui’s name was-
“What the fuck-“ She wasn’t sure if that was her or Sokka.
One - one - creepy gold eye blinked at them. “It’s a glass eye,” Zuko said slowly. “I kinda have to take it out sometimes.”
That explained everything and nothing at all. “It’s a what?” Sokka demanded.
“Glass eye,” Zuko said, then waved something small and eye-shaped in their general direction. He looked slightly more annoyed than usual, and then it struck Katara that someone screaming when they saw your face probably didn’t do wonders for self-esteem. “An eye. Made of glass.”
Sokka looked outright terrified. “But... how did your eye turn into glass? That happens? Do I have to worry about that?”
Katara did not slam her head into the wall, showing incredible self restraint. “Sokka, you idiot!” she groaned.
He grabbed her by the shoulders, eyes wide. “Katara, why didn’t you tell me this could happen?!”
As a healer, she had a duty to tell him he was being an absolute idiot and that it was clearly a prosthetic.
As a little sister, she had a duty to fuck with him, and that was a far more sacred duty.
“I’m sorry, Sokka,” she managed to sigh. “I didn’t want you to worry, with all the stuff you do that- no, don’t worry. It’s not so bad.”
“What?” His voice was strangled in fear. “Katara, what? Katara what am I doing?! How do I stop it?! Katara?!”
She’d almost forgotten about Zuko until he very sadly said “why do you think Aang doesn’t eat meat? The Avatar needs two eyes, and if one falls out, it could cause problems.”
She did not like Zuko at all, but right then, she loved him.
Ten minutes later, Sokka had sworn off meat, and then the other contributing factors to eyes spontaneously turning into glass and falling out: sarcasm, boomerangs and being an annoying big brother.
“He knows we’re joking, right?” Zuko asked cautiously after Sokka sprinted out to apologise to the spirits for making fun of waterbending.
“Eh, he’ll figure it out.”
———
“So,” Toph said as they settled down for dinner - with Sokka being late for a meal for the first time in his life, “why is Snoozles throwing seal jerky into the canyon?”
“I have a glass eye,” Zuko explained.
The earthbender nodded sagely. “Yeah, makes sense.”
Aang was slowly looking between the three of them like it would make any of this any more sensical. “Uh... what?”
“Long story,” Katara sighed.
Her brother strode up to the campfire with his usual level of theatre, then remembered that being dramatic was also a risk factor and very calmly and slowly sat down. “I think I’m safe.”
“What about your hair?” Zuko asked, completely blank faced.
“... please tell me this isn’t why you had the bald ponytail.”
“You think I did that willingly? No, I needed at least one eye working.”
Sokka sprinted into the temple.
“You’re not actually going to let him shave his hair, are you?” Zuko asked, looking mildly concerned.
Okay, this was perfect and Katara would remember it lovingly for the rest of her life, but even her natural little sister sadism wouldn’t stretch that far. “Toph, please bring him back here.”
———
“Toph, let me out of the rock! I need my eyes!”
———
“Wait... what?”
———
“What do you mean it’s not a medical condition?!”
———
“What do you mean it’s a prosthetic!?!”
———
“YOU LET ME THROW THE SEAL JERKY AWAY!”
———
“Okay,” Sokka said calmly, two hours and a lot of yelling later. “That was a very cruel prank and I’m never forgiving any of you.”
“Shut up, Snoozles,” Toph scoffed.“There are more important things than your dignity. For example,” she turned to Zuko with a huge grin, “can I touch it?”
“It’s been in his head!” Sokka screeched. Apparently the dramatics were back on. “It has head goo on it!”
Katara frowned. “Sokka, how do you think bodies work?”
“Please?” Toph begged, giving very impressive polar-puppy-dog eyes for someone who couldn’t see. “No one ever lets me touch their real eyes.”
“Because you’re a menace,” Katara scoffed.
“Please, Sparky?”
“Ugh, fine,” Zuko sighed. “Give me a second.”
It occurred to everyone a moment too late that, oh yeah, if anyone was going to spontaneously invent glassbending, it would be Toph.
she/her, cluttering is my fluency disorder and the state of my living space, God gave me Pathological Demand Avoidance because They knew I'd be too powerful without it, of the opinion that "y'all" should be accepted in formal speech, 18+ [ID: profile pic is a small brown snail climbing up a bright green shallot, surrounded by other shallot stalks. End ID.]
293 posts