Perils of being a Tolkien fan writer…

brazenbells:

naryaflame:

Me: “OK, let’s see what canon has to say about XYZ.”

*Sits surrounded by Silm, HoME, Unfinished Tales etc. for two hours.*

Me, despairing: “What even is canon!?”

Or there’s the other side…

Me, rubbing my hands together and eyeballing all the books: Now let’s see which one of you fuckers has a throwaway line to support this bullshit theory I just made up and want to write a fic about…..

the-artifice-of-eternity:

“When the sun is shrouded in darkness,
when the stars are dimmed,
when the mountains are set in motion,
when pregnant camels are abandoned,
when wild beasts are herded together,
when the seas boil over,
when souls are sorted into classes,
when the baby girl buried alive is asked
for what sin she was killed,
when the records of deeds are spread open,
when the sky is stripped away,
when Hell is made to blaze
and Paradise brought near:
then every soul will know what it has brought about.”

— Qur’an, Surah 81: The Overthrowing (via drakontomalloi)

mxry-am:

ADHD Gothic

•You’re scrolling your social media. You think it’s been 10 minutes. You check your clock. Five days have passed.

•You open the fridge, wanting something. You forget what you wanted. You only want to eat what you forgot. You forgot the last time you ate.

•Your leg is constantly moving. It hasn’t stopped for a while. You’re tapping your fingers. They hurt. You don’t stop.

•You read several paragraphs. You understand nothing. You read it all again. You understand even less.

•Someone says something to you. You ask them to repeat it again. You still don’t hear it. You ask them to repeat it again. You still don’t hear it. You stop asking.

•Someone tells you to focus. You focus too hard. The glass cracks. You shift to the astral plane. You know every single fact about dolphins and are ready to fight the king for dominance.

•Someone tells you that if it was important, you would of remembered it. You don’t remember their name. Guess they aren’t important. You watch as they fade away.

•You need to get up. Your brain doesn’t know how. You need to get up. You need to get up. You need to get up. You’re screaming and crying now. Your brain still doesn’t process it. You don’t get up.

•You look through your things. You can’t find what you need. What do you need? Someone tells you to organize. You try to do that. The mess gets worse. What do you need?

•You have many tabs open. 24 on wikipedia. 15 on youtube. 7 on social media. 6 on spotify. 4 on pandora. You think of a thing. You open another tab. After 5 seconds, you think of a thing. You open another tab. You open another tab. You open another tab. What are on half of these?

•You take out your phone, and. stare blankly at it for 20 minutes. You get on tumblr, and close tumblr to do something else. You open tumblr back up.

•You start a project. You start doing it. You start another project. You start doing it. You start another project. You start doing it. You never finish the projects.

protoindoeuropean:

One of my absolute favourite concepts Vedic Sanskrit has introduced me to is the comparison by negation – basically, instead of being introduced by a comparative preposition such as like or as, the compared noun (phrase) is simply negated.

For example, “She, like a wolf, hunted them all down,” is instead “She, not a wolf, hunted them all down” (but in the former meaning).

An example from Rigveda: the Hymn to the Goddess of Night (RV X.127 Rā́trī), verse 4, lines 2 and 3:

नि ते यामन्नविक्ष्महि ।
वृक्षे न वसतिँ वयः ॥

ní te yā́mann_ávikṣmahi    down into [our] homes we retired,
vr̥kṣé ná vasatím̐ váyaḥ     not birds to [their] nests on trees

(→supply like for not for an accurate translation)

The principle being that the comparison is invoked by the mere presence of the noun (phrase) the original thing is compared to, while the negation reinforces the mere comparison as opposed to it being actually real, thus “She, not [literally, but figuratively] a wolf, hunted them all down.”