TAGGED BY: @the-feral-king RULES: Answer the questions and tag 20 5 people
HOW TALL ARE YOU? like 5′5 YES I’M SHORT S H U T U P
WHAT COLOR AND STYLE IS YOUR HAIR? The lazy coxcomb flop of an unemployed dandy.
WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR EYES? green/brown
DO YOU WEAR GLASSES/CONTACTS? Used to wear glasses on account of my chameleon eyes, but my brain seems to have figured out how to keep everything in focus and my eyes pointed in the same direction by itself over time.
DO YOU USE BRACES? My teeth are perfect and I don’t deserve them.
WHAT IS YOUR FASHION STYLE? If I’m dressing up for the outside world, I usually go for Ambiguously High ButchFemme. If I’m going to a party, I try to suit up as formally I can in masculine attire and then put on a full face of glittery makeup. If I’m at home and slouching around as usual, I’m either in one of my no-effort-required knit dresses or tank-top and jeans. Or naked.
WHEN WERE YOU BORN? 1989
HOW OLD ARE YOU? 26 until 08/25
DO YOU HAVE ANY SIBLINGS? I am the last of my kind.
WHAT SCHOOL OR COLLEGE DO YOU GO TO? I graduated from Linfield College back in ‘11.
WHAT KIND OF STUDENT ARE YOU? I was the kind to care obsessively about how my teachers saw me and how well I understood every subject until I burned out in senior year, spent my last fuck on changing majors, shat out a thesis, and coasted into graduation on the landslide of failing grades and broken dreams. ᕕ( ᐛ)ᕗ
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE SUBJECTS? Art, Creative Writing, History, Theater, Poetry, Language
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE SHOWS? lolol do you mean currently or of all time? Because that includes a lot of crusty 90′s animes and defunct space operas. Uh… Gundam Wing, B:TAS and Beyond, Gargoyles, DS-9, Battlestar Galactica, Gankutsuou, Stephen Universe, Over the Garden Wall, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Jeeves and Wooster, Gormenghast…. I’ve immediately forgotten everything I’ve enjoyed in the last five years.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE MOVIES? The Fall, Pan’s Labyrinth, Tokyo Godfathers, Princess Mononoke, Oldboy, Thirst, Quills, Vampire Hunter D, Hunchback of Notre Dam, Beauty and the Beast, The Great Mouse Detective, The Road to El Dorado, Hellboy, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Rashomon, Ran, Drunken Angel, Lawrence of Arabia, Orlando, Brendan and the Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Joan of Arc, Metropolis, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari… you didn’t even give me a genre to pick from, you monster.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS? The Goblin Emperor, the Sandman and Lucifer series which I am counting as books, Dinotopia, Swordspoint, The Fortress Series, Beast, Song of the Magdalene, Left Hand of Darkness, Dealing with Dragons, The Silmarillion, Devil in the White City, The Changeling Sea, Coraline, American Gods and Anansi Boys, The Abhorsen Trilogy…
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PASTIME? Staring into middle distance thinking about stories, listening to music, overanalyzing animated shows for children, watching Let’s Plays, dressing up pixel dragons, and drawing.
DO YOU HAVE ANY REGRETS? May the years between 1998 and 2008, and everything from 2011 to 2014, be erased from history
WHAT IS YOUR DREAM JOB? Comic artist/writer if I’m freelancing, script writer or storyboarder if I’m employed
WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET MARRIED AND WHERE? Sure, as long as I can force everyone to cosplay. >:3
ARE YOU A GIRLY GIRL, A REGULAR GIRL OR A BOYISH GIRL? a literal swamp
WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE KIDS AND HOW MANY? that’s not a question i can answer right now
DO YOU LIKE SHOPPING? yes. unfortunately.
HOW MANY COUNTRIES HAVE YOU VISITED SO FAR? I’ve been all over the US on roadtrips, I’ve been to Canada once as a kid, I lived in Vienna for a semester, and bopped around Germany, Italy, Hungary, and the Czech Republic while I was there. 🙂 Best time of my life.
WHAT’S THE SCARIEST DREAM YOU’VE EVER HAD? Ooh, I’ve had lots of memorably terrifying dreams! I’m quite fond of some of them. One of the coolest ones was about a sentient, malevolent windstorm that was chasing me. I’m also a fan of the ones that take familiar places and invert them somehow, so that they’re strange, uncanny, and full of spectral horrors. ❤
DO YOU HAVE ANY ENEMIES? God and Mr. Mathews from 12th grade.
DO YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND? Ye i’m hitched to this dork
PUT YOUR PHONE ON SHUFFLE ON ITUNES AND WRITE DOWN THE FIRST 15 SONGS WITHOUT SKIPPING: ( Don’t tell me what to do MEME. I have more music on my desktop computer than I could listen to in a lifetime. Half of it isn’t even mine. Fight me. )
Tit Willow (from The Mikado)– The King’s Singers Les Donneurs de Sérénade (Mandoline) (1901) –Jerome Ducros & Philippe Jaroussky Still Alive– GLaDOS & Jonathan Coulton Forest Song– Peg Millet Otherside– Red Hot Chili Peppers Lullaby (Songs from Mother Courage)– Duke Special This is What Makes Us Girls– Lana Del Rey FFVII Main Theme (piano)– Nobou Uematsu Wild Horses (cover) –Tori Amos Vater Unser– E Nomine Zeit Zu Gehen– Joachim Witt Carol of the Bells– Metallica Unnamed Keyboard Solo– Dream Theater Something in the Way– Nirvana Melancholy Rose– Operatica
There are many ways to craft rings (for those of you who can’t shape metal with your mind)!
One simple method is simply to drill a hole in an appropriately sized disc of metal, and mill it out on a lathe until it fits the desired proportions. A bit crude, not much room for artistry, but effective.
Another popular method is to hammer out a strip of metal (yes, for this step and this step only, one might see a smith bent over the anvil with a flatter) and coax it around a die until the ends meet and can be welded together. Welded rings can be very elaborate, set with stones, cut into lovely shapes, but depending on the strength of the bond and the delicacy of the materials, one might sacrifice durability.
And then there is my favorite and arguably the best method: metal casting! First one carves a model of one’s ring out of wax, making sure to leave in spurs as conduits for the wax to flow out of the mold and the metal to flow in. Then one encases the wax ring in molding material, secure within a mother-mold. Heating the mold burns out the wax, leaving a hollow inside mold in the shape of your ring. Then it is only a matter of pouring in the desired metals, letting them cool, and then completing the project by sawing off the spurs, filing down the metal, and adding whatever embellishments the design requires.
Naturally, one finished any fired piece by giving it a good pickling in acid and a high polish! Then you teach your friends the process, adding in a pinch of blood magic and sorcery, and murder them when they use your techniques to thwart your plans!
*cough*
In any case, none of the methods above will look like this:
Here’s a general rule: People in the past were ignorant about a lot of things, but they weren’t stupid. If they used something, chances are they had a good reason. There are exceptions, but plate armor is not one of them.
Long Answer:
For a type of armor, no matter what it is, to be considered effective, it has to meet three criteria.
The three criteria are: Economic Efficiency, Protectiveness, and Mobility.
1. Is it Economically Efficient?
Because of the nature of society in the Middle Ages, what with equipment being largely bring-it-yourself when it came to anybody besides arrowfodder infantry who’d been given one week of training, economic efficiency was a problem for the first couple of decades after plate armor was introduced in France in the 1360s. It wasn’t easy to make, and there wasn’t really a ‘science’ to it yet, so only the wealthiest of French soldiers, meaning knights and above, had it; unless of course somebody stole it off a dead French noble. The Hundred Years War was in full swing at the time, and the French were losing badly to the English and their powerful longbows, so there were plenty of dead French nobles and knights to go around. That plate armor was not very economically efficient for you unless you were a rich man, though, it also was not exactly what we would call “full” plate armor.
Above: Early plate armor, like that used by knights and above during the later 1300s and early 1400s.
Above: Two examples of what most people mean when they say “full” plate armor, which would have been seen in the mid to late 1400s and early 1500s.
Disclaimer: These are just examples. No two suits of armor were the same because they weren’t mass-produced, and there was not really a year when everybody decided to all switch to the next evolution of plate armor. In fact it would not be improbably to see all three of these suits on the same battlefield, as expensive armor was often passed down from father to son and used for many decades.
Just like any new technology, however, as production methods improved, the product got cheaper.
Above: The Battle of Barnet, 1471, in which everybody had plate armor because it’s affordable by then.
So if we’re talking about the mid to late 1400s, which is when our modern image of the “knight in shining armor” sort of comes from, then yes, “full” plate armor is economically efficient. It still wasn’t cheap, but neither are modern day cars, and yet they’re everywhere. Also similar to cars, plate armor is durable enough to be passed down in families for generations, and after the Hundred Years War ended in 1453, there was a lot of used military equipment on sale for cheap.
2. Is it Protective?
This is a hard question to answer, particularly because no armor is perfect, and as soon as a new, seemingly ‘perfect’ type of armor appears, weapons and techniques adapt to kill the wearer anyway, and the other way around. Early plate armor was invented as a response to the extreme armor-piercing ability of the English longbow, the armor-piercing ability of a new kind of crossbow, and advancements in arrowhead technology.
Above: The old kind of arrowhead, ineffective against most armor.
Above: The new kind of arrowhead, very effective at piercing chainmaille and able to pierce plate armor if launched with enough power.
Above: An arrow shot from a “short” bow with the armor-piercing tip(I think it’s called a bodkin tip) piercing a shirt of chainmaille. However, the target likely would have survived since soldiers wore protective layers of padding underneath their armor, so if the arrow penetrated skin at all, it wasn’t deep. That’s Terry Jones in the background.
Above: A crossbow bolt with the armor piercing tip penetrating deep through the same shirt of chainmaille. The target would likely not survive.
Above: A crossbow bolt from the same crossbow glancing off a breastplate, demonstrating that it was in fact an improvement over wearing just chainmaille.
Unfortunately it didn’t help at all against the powerful English longbows at close range, but credit to the French for trying. It did at least help against weaker bows.
Now for melee weapons.
It didn’t take long for weapons to evolve to fight this new armor, but rarely was it by way of piercing through it. It was really more so that the same weapons were now being used in new ways to get around the armor.
Above: It’s a popular myth that Medieval swords were dull, but they still couldn’t cut through plate armor, nor could they thrust through it. Your weapon would break before the armor would. Most straight swords could, however, thrust through chainmaille and anything weaker.
There were three general answers to this problem:
1. Be more precise, and thrust through the weak points.
Above: The weak points of a suit of armor. Most of these points would have been covered by chainmaille, leather, thick cloth, or all three, but a sword can thrust through all three so it doesn’t matter.
To achieve the kind of thrusting accuracy needed to penetrate these small gaps, knights would often grip the blade of their sword with one hand and keep the other hand on the grip. This technique was called “half-swording”, and you could lose a finger if you don’t do it right, so don’t try it at home unless you have a thick leather glove to protect you, as most knights did, but it can also be done bare-handed.
Above: Examples of half-swording.
2.Just hit the armor so fucking hard that the force carries through and potentially breaks bones underneath.
Specialty weapons were made for this, but we’ll get to them in a minute. For now I’m still focusing on swords because I like how versatile the European longsword is.
Above: A longsword. They’re made for two-handed use, but they’re light enough to be used effectively in one hand if you’d like to have a shield or your other arm has been injured. Longswords are typically about 75% of the height of their wielders.
Assuming you’re holding the sword pointing towards the sky, the part just above the grip is called the crossguard, and the part just below the grip is called the pommel. If you hold the sword upside-down by the blade, using the same careful gripping techniques as with half-swording, you can strike with either the crossguard or the pommel, effectively turning the sword into a warhammer. This technique was called the Murder Stroke, and direct hits could easily dent plate armor, and leave the man inside bruised, concussed, or with a broken bone.
Above: The Murder Stroke as seen in a Medieval swordfighting manual.
Regular maces, hammers, and other blunt weapons were equally effective if you could get a hard enough hit in without leaving yourself open, but they all suffered from part of the plate armor’s intelligent design. Nearly every part of it was smooth and/or rounded, meaning that it’s very easy for blows to ‘slide’ off, which wastes a lot of their power. This makes it very hard to get a ‘direct’ hit.
Here come the specialized weapons to save the day.
Above: A lucerne, or claw hammer. It’s just one of the specialized weapons, but it encompasses all their shared traits so I’m going to only list it.
These could be one-handed, two-handed, or long polearms, but the general idea was the same. Either crack bones beneath armor with the left part, or penetrate plate armor with the right part. The left part has four ‘prongs’ so that it can ‘grip’ smooth plate armor and keep its force when it hits without glancing off. On the right side it as a super sturdy ‘pick’, which is about the only thing that can penetrate the plate armor itself. On top it has a sharp tip that’s useful for fighting more lightly armored opponents.
3. Force them to the ground and stab them through the visor with a dagger.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Many conflicts between two armored knights would turn into a wrestling match. Whoever could get the other on the ground had a huge advantage, and could finish his opponent, or force him to surrender, with a dagger.
By now you might be thinking “Dang, full plate armor has a lot of weaknesses, so how can it be called good armor?”
The answer is because, like all armor is supposed to do, it minimizes your target area. If armor is such that your enemy either needs to risk cutting their fingers to target extremely small weak points, bring a specialized weapons designed specifically for your armor, or wrestle you to the ground to defeat you, that’s some damn good armor. So yes, it will protect you pretty well.
Above: The red areas represent the weak points of a man not wearing armor.
Also, before I move on to Mobility, I’m going to talk briefly about a pet-peeve of mine: Boob-plates.
If you’re writing a fantasy book, movie, or video game, and you want it to be realistically themed, don’t give the women boob-shaped armor. It wasn’t done historically even in the few cases when women wore plate armor, and that’s because it isn’t as protective as a smooth, rounded breastplate like you see men wearing. A hit with any weapon between the two ‘boobs’ will hit with its full force rather than glancing off, and that’ll hurt. If you’re not going for a realistic feel, then do whatever you want. Just my advice.
Above: Joan of Arc, wearing properly protective armor.
An exception to this is in ancient times. Female gladiators sometimes wore boob-shaped armor because that was for entertainment and nobody cared if they lived or died. Same with male gladiators. There was also armor shaped like male chests in ancient times, but because men are more flat-chested than women, this caused less of a problem. Smooth, rounded breastplates are still superior, though.
3. Does it allow the wearer to keep his or her freedom of movement?
Okay, I’ve been writing this for like four hours, so thankfully this is the simplest question to answer. There’s a modern myth that plate armor weighed like 700 lbs, and that knights could barely move in it at all, but that isn’t true. On a suit of plate armor from the mid to late 1400s or early 1500s, all the joints are hinged in such a way that they don’t impede your movement very much at all.
The whole suit, including every individual plate, the chainmaille underneath the plates, the thick cloth or leather underneath the chainmaille, and your clothes and underwear all together usually weighed about 45-55 lbs, and because the weight was distributed evenly across your whole body, you’d hardly feel the weight at all. Much heavier suits of armor that did effectively ‘lock’ the wearer in place did exist, but they never saw battlefield use. Instead, they were for showing off at parades and for jousting. Jousting armor was always heavier, thicker, and more stiffly jointed than battlefield armor because the knight only needed to move certain parts of his body, plus being thrown off a horse by a lance–even a wooden one that’s not meant to kill–has a very, very high risk of injury.
Here’s a bunch of .gifs of a guy demonstrating that you can move pretty freely in plate armor.
Above: Can you move in it? Yes.
Here are links to the videos that I made these .gifs from:
concerning weight and mobility: keep in mind the modern body armor worn by united states army soldiers weighs 30 lbs. even granting that modern soldiers, even the women, are larger than most medieval knights, it’s still significant that the state of the art in 2016 is only ten or fifteen pounds lighter than full plate.
and they march long distances in it, which knights generally did not have to do in their armor. conclusion: plate armor was not too heavy to fight in.
as for mobility, i think the myth that knights couldn’t move in their armor mainly comes from jousting armor, which was designed to lock in place and be absurdly heavy, simply because it was the car in a medieval demolition derby. you weren’t fighting in it, you were simply being carried toward a pointy log at high speeds.
This is such a good post! Also I’m happy to see the murder stroke has shown up in more and more films of late – I think even the Nic Cage film Season of the Witch shows it.
For anyone who went through that reference video masterpost of greatswords and half-swording stuff: this is the other side of the equation, the armor! 🙂
@redsixwing So… How do I actually interact with your muses? Would love to RP with you but I’m always too shy to ask this stuff.
:’D Aw, babe! I had no idea or I’d have pounced long ago! XD
Hope you don’t mind, I thought I’d turn your reply into a new post in case there are other hesitant would-be-RPers out there who’d like a starter-kit for interacting with RP blogs. 🙂
Keep in mind that all RP blogs are different and have a variety of preferred styles! Some popular formats include:
A) The Traditional Ask Blog: Anyone, with or without an RP blog, can send questions to this blog and receive in-character answers. It’s like a Q/A booth for the character. Usually they operate in first person, and in my experience, they cycle through bursts of activity and down-time. They tend not to do RP threads. Sometimes use RP memes and other prompts to initiate interaction. B) The Traditional Paragraphers: Tend to only interact with other RP blogs. RP posts usually begin with a long, formal starter that sets the scene and introduces the characters. Replies tend to be long and in third person, and they usually keep all separate interactions and threads methodically tagged. C) The Chain Askers: These blogs send and receive in-character asks from the people they’re roleplaying with, and rather than consolidating the RP into a thread using reblogs, they send their reply directly to their RP partner’s blog. These blogs can be difficult to keep track of if you’re not following all parties involved in the RP, but they are also usually more open to quick replies, improvised interactions, and casual RP. They usually, but not always, use first person for their in-character posts. D) The Mash Up: (That’s me). These blogs use some or all of the above methods. There are varying levels of in-character posts and OOC posts. Sometimes functions as an aesthetic blog for their character. Often use memes and other “canned” starters to initiate RPs. E) This Is A Side-Blog I Never Check/I Only RP With My Squad Blog: I have a couple of these. These are niche RP accounts that usually house a secondary RP muse, or a mun that is only really interested in RPing with a particular set of other RPers for their character. Activity levels may vary. Sometimes secretly crack blogs. F) I Am Dead: this blog is dead. Check when the last posts were made. No one lives here anymore. To send asks to this blog is to shout into the wind.
–A good first step to interaction is ALWAYS to just look at the blog! 🙂 Read whatever “rules and guidelines” pages they have up, check out their headcanon tags, and just generally see what other people are posting. Also, sometimes blogs will used“Open/Closed” signs to indicate whether or not they’re ready to play.
–Second step: determine whether this blog is open to interacting with anons or non-characters. If they’re open to taking questions from the public and you want to just shoot their character some questions or prompts, go for it!
–Wait until they post an open prompt, meme, or starter, and just jump in! 🙂 RP memes a great way to break the ice and shake things up. That’s WHY people do RP memes: to explore new kinds of scenarios and throw together characters that wouldn’t meet otherwise! This makes a perfect opportunity for you and/or your muse to introduce yourself and get an in-character repertoire going.
–If it looks like the muse you want to interact with only RPs with other RP accounts, think about whether you’d like to start an account yourself. It depends how attached to the fandom you are, and whether you have a character that really speaks to you, or if you want to make on OC that can play in the same sandbox. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. XD That’s a lot of work if all you want to do is play with one muse! But hey! Man! That could be fun too! No one is stopping you. 🙂 Making RP blogs is fun and there’s no Cabal of Tumblr Roleplay that’s decides how you should do it.
–An alternative to this would be to contact the mun you want to play with, and see if they’re amenable to RPing privately on Skype or on chat! This is a GREAT option if you’re kind of “meh” about making a whole blog for RP, or don’t have a solid idea for a muse, or want to experiment with a bunch of different muses, or what have you. 🙂 Skype RP moves a lot quicker than Tumblr RP, and can be much more fluid and forgiving if you’re just starting out. Also, privacy is nice for some of us. Not everyone wants to make their RPs available to the whole world, and that is 1000% Absolutely Fine And Okay.
–Contacting the mun you want to play with is always a good option if you have questions about what they are, and are not, open to RPing. Sometimes it’s good, even necessary, to have a chat beforehand about headcanons and styles and squicks to determine whether or not you two are compatible RP partners. If you’ve got an idea for a long, complex, threaded RP with a sweeping story arc and a particular scenario that you want to plot out– you gotta do some meta gaming with your partner, or you run the risk of bad communication ruining everyone’s fun, or potentially hurting feelings.
😀 I hope this helps assuage any fears of potential RPers and answers your burning questions about how to interact with the lawless playground of sin and heartbreak that is Tumblr RP. Go forth with my blessing!
“I am no servant of Manwë, but should the winds be unfavorable, I can provide a draft of heat if necessary… I do not believe there is enough of my, ah, element, aboard for me to move the craft by will alone, but I could attempt it in a crisis.”
Sauron paced around deck, muttering such considerations to himself while inspecting whatever knot or pulley came under his hands. The crew made their exit with many a curious glance backwards, but there was little fuss.
His wayward pirate thrall he noted was churning with questions– though not the intended recipient of his ring, Ji’s mind was still an open book via the bond with its master.
“You are wondering why this is novel to me– this ship, this voyage, the sea. You presume that I was at leisure during my passage to Numenor to take in the sights, and not bound in iron and mithril deep within the hold.” He mentioned coldly while the wraith was in hearing. “It is not your place to ask, but I will tell you anyway: I recall nothing but that it was dark, and cold, and damp, and that I was groundless; without bearing or sense of where I was going, and all around I felt the hostile power of the sea growing dense around me, closing in, wishing to crush and bury me. …It was a tense voyage.” Gold eyes flickered, askance.
“The sea itself does not frighten me. I am duly and appropriately cautious of the powers that govern it, and aware that in its demesne I am at my weakest. I do not relish, Ji, the helplessness that water engenders in me. But today I am determined to overcome these obstacles and attempt something I have never done before. That is why I require help, and this assortment of gear whose usefulness I am not entirely assured of. I do not know yet what I will need, so I shall take every precaution. And I am glad of your help though, in truth, had you chosen to withhold it, I would have commandeered your ship myself.”
He cocked his head, gold ornaments chiming. “…Not as a personal slight, you understand. I am merely determined to see out this little experiment, and your vessel, with its particular enchantment, is the only one that will do.”
As they cast out to sea, the dark lord drew a deep breath and steadied himself, watching the horizon. It was a peculiar sensation to feel so vulnerable, as if he were another mortal with only his wits and tools to keep him afloat. But the wits and tools of men had been enough for them to travel the world over, and his own, he considered, were a formidable force in themselves. He kept his senses tuned to his Cousin’s presence, reassuring himself that for the time being, he remained far afield… That suited his purposes for the moment.
The moment the last corsair stepped off the ship, the many rowboats slowly moving away, closer to the shore but never landing, just slowly rocking nearby the cliffs in the gentle waves, Ji Indur felt two things- a sense of loneliness to have his ship so empty and abandoned and the sensation of a cornered animal as he himself could not go anywhere now unless he’d decide to jump into the water. But nay, that would be foolish and look just ridiculous. T’was not that he was /afraid/ of his master. Not at all. At least he kept telling himself that, and right now it seemed there was little for him to worry about besides moving the ship which already had started to jerk forward as the sails had been set, catching the gentle breeze.
But before he could step to the helm he was addressed by the Maia and once again harshly reminded that even not speaking his mind would not save him from trouble as the ring gave his master ample possibilities to peer directly into his servant’s mind, even without Ji Indur’s permission. How he loathed this connection as it left him without any defenses but he forced himself to remain calm, bowing his head lightly as if to apologize for his curious thoughts.
While he felt compelled to ask more, curious questions about his master’s time in Númenor, the corsair felt it would not be wise to remind Him of the period in His existence where He had been a prisoner and treated with little respect. So no, no word and no thought would be there willing to ask for more, instead Ji Indur focused on the tasks at hand and the question as to what Sauron had planned and was seeking to accomplish on this element that was under the command of Osse. To think that the Dark Lord felt /weak/ here would not change anything about how easily He could dispose of an unruly wraith would Ji Indur seek to cause trouble or disrupt His scheming.
And being told that Sauron had considered taking the ship against the wraith’s wishes did do little to soothe the worries and the tension that was still taking hold of his mind and body. Ah yes… That…particular enchantment. For now it would not cause him any harm he hoped so maybe the Maia even found it amusing that one of the Nine had been blessed by the Master Of the Seas. Taking a deep, albeit unneeded breath, the wraith then walked up to the wheel to take control and guide the Kraken out into the open sea. Of course he too wanted to know now what Sauron had planned but all he could still think of was that He’d try to bait Osse somehow and capture him like a fish and if only for a moment. In a fight Maia against Maia with their elements not there to help them…who would win?
The ship’s prow pushed through emerald blue waters at a brisk pace, the winds behind them accommodating the strange two-man journey with neither wrath nor mischief. The sun held steady in a cloudless sky, and the Kraken cut a white-lipped ripple through the untroubled sea.
Sauron, having acclimatized somewhat to the roll of the deck, stood at the stern’s rail and observed the foam-flecked trail fanning out behind them. His helmsman had grown quiet during the journey, both in voice and thought. He’d erred in reminding the pirate how much of his mind was open to him… it was often best to let Men retain the illusion of privacy, to preserve goodwill.
But his attention was not on Ji, but the waves, and the sleek creatures that dove and dogged their wake– like wolves, but in play, rather than hunt. They were nearing the depths he desired, and his heart thundered.
“Here. Steady her here.”
Master if you are listening, bend your thoughts on me and shroud me from Uluboz this day… The maia rubbed his palms together, centering his will.
There was work to be done; and despite the dangers, the surge of excitement made him giddy.
First the rope. It was as long and sturdy as he could have hoped for– what it had previously been designed for he did not know. Perhaps a ship’s anchor, which would be appropriate. To its end he affixed a heavy iron cast hook, used for lifting cargo. When that was to his liking, he moved up the rope and tied the green glass buoys at intervals along its length. Five seemed sufficient. Then the rope he looped and slipped about the main mast, and tied it with a firm and clever knot.
The entire span of rope weighed as much as a deep chest of coins, but to the lord of anvil and iron it was no difficulty to shoulder its coils and heave it over the side. The length from the mast ran taut as the bulk of it sank, reaching a strange equilibrium between the iron hook and the air-filled baubles. There– he tugged his beard, pleased.
Next, the net. It was a finely crafted work indeed; he could smell Teler hands and Teler silks in its lightweight weave. He wondered briefly where Ji might have acquired such a thing– but a pirate has his ways. There was no elaborate preparation needed here. He folded the net carefully and set it to one side. It, like many of the items, was not essential in itself, but rather a precaution. Or at least, he mused, a interesting diversion. Time would tell.
Finally, it was his turn to prepare. Large hands nimbly removed the gold bands from his ears and wrists and fingers– all save one. Then the cover from his head, the coat from his broad shoulders, and the shirt beneath, were laid all aside; waves of slate-colored hair fell over his bare back, unrestrained. He stripped down to nothing save an undercloth and a sash, into which he tucked two daggers– curved and wicked as fangs– and the folded net.
Then he turned to his helmsman. “If anything goes wrong, know that this line here is my way back to safety. If I am unable to return to the surface on my own power, I will send a vibration up this rope, and you, Ji, will need to pull me aboard. Do not hesitate to use the power of Failaya, understand?”
The dark lord grinned, sharp and white. “Wish me luck.”
With that he balanced himself catlike on the ship’s rail, and dove overboard.
The Vala sucked in a breath. –Fire–, or the idea of it, leapt from the mind of Fëanáro to his with a strong sense of warning, like a firm hand holding him back.
He had not expected that; he’d never had the mind of an elf touch his before. He had not know they could. For the most infinitesimal fraction of a second, he had a glimpse into the wheels and colorful fragments of the finest engineering brain the Noldor race had yet produced. It felt a bit like catching a glimpse of someone extremely beautiful undressing through an open window… Melkor felt a coppery blush spread hot across his face, realizing too late that he’d not heard a word that had been spoken for several seconds.
”…a system of thirty-two graphemes…“ Fëanáro continued, voice low and intense, the voice that could famously enthrall a lecture hall in total silence with only a breath, or a all the kingdom with a roar.
As much as it had been tantalizing to gain knowledge of something so pivotal and cryptic as the written word, the chance to have uninterrupted, private audiences with the High Prince had been many times as tempting. He could only imagine what had drawn down the Spirit of Fire from his high disdain of the Vala to have a seat at this table… Perhaps as the ‘least of the dwellers in Aman’, he was simply the only one of his brethren available for use in this (slightly blasphemous) experiment.
What a strain Vairë must be under, winding our two threads together… Melkor reflected, eyes tracking the elegant, meaningless strokes of ink that flowed across the scroll. They may as well have been geese flying across the open sky, for all they resembled language. Could he learn? Did a being with no set biology, no childhood, whose raison d’être had been set from the instant of their creation, have the capacity to change?
“Who, if not I, Master Fëanáro? When there was Nothing, I learned of all there could be. When there was only Harmony I wrought Dissonance; when the elements were separate, I broke and recombined them; for the sake of my siblings’ law, I have had to–” Lie “–learn to become other than what I was in order to live. If The Mighty Arising cannot comprehend something new and unthought of, then surely, it is beyond all Valar.” Melkor gleamed, long tendrils of fire curling into a smug halo. But then, with the candid spirit of the meeting weighing upon him, the Vala paused, thorned shoulders rising in a contrite shrug.
“…That is, in any case, the only evidence I have to suggest that I can indeed learn of things beyond the continuum of my design. The truth is… I do not yet know.”
I wish to know… I am frightened NOT to know… the shadows of his mind whispered. What hope is there, if it is not possible to alter what was made?
“Please. Explain how you devised such things. I am listening.”
« And I would not be surprised, if it were beyond all Valar », Fëanáro answered, but not with malice. He pondered, almost on the verge of tilting his head like an attentive, curious child, but raising his chin instead. « I read… transcriptions of some of the councils in the Máhanaxar, those who were understandable enough to be written down. Again, from memory to parchment. » He was thinking about one of them, in particular, that council which had sealed his mother’s fate and his father’s choice into what Mandos had judged universal laws; he was thinking of the Statute, and he pursed his lips at the thought. « They struggle to understand needs that are not their own, and fail. »
A tense note quivered in his voice, but as his eyes turned to Melkor again, and to his burning aura, the wrinkle between his eyes disappeared and his furrowed brows relaxed. « But I do not yet know either. » Yet Melkor was agreeing to experiment with him and give him an answer, and that for now was enough. He sought them, and thus answers would come, one way or the other.
He sat down again, reached out for a new, untouched paper, and picked the quill up, the one whose tip had been blackened by the Vala’s hot breath. « Consider this, Melkórë. Each of the sounds that the Quendi produce with their mouths, their teeth, tongues and throats must coincide with a sign on the paper, and the correspondence must be conventional even as it is arbitrary. When you read those signs you will know to which sounds they correspond, and you will not have to hear them aloud to understand. That is the core of written language. And each of the Tengwar represents and is adapted to coincide to a specific point of articulation in our mouths. »
He stared at the Vala for a moment, then leaned forward and dipped the quill in the black ink. « This is tinco », he said, and as he pronounced it he also wrote it. Upside down with regard to himself, so that Melkor could observe it from the right direction. His hand moved with a deliberate slowness, making it evident what it was writing: a long vertical line and a single bow on its upper right. « The sound it represents is— T. Voiceless dental occlusive, to use specific terminology. Your tongue must touch the upper arch of your teeth, which is why it is dental, air stops as it leaves the mouth and we cannot prolong the sound, which is why it is an occlusive, and there is no vibration of our throat », he then touched the lower part of his neck, only partially covered by his collar, « here, which is why it is voiceless. But I am being too specific. »
He dipped the quill again. « Still, it is useful information, for the Tengwar are divided in four series, the témar. Four columns, and the first of them is the Tincotéma, called so because all the sounds represented by these graphemes are dental –or alveolar, which is simply, ah, the tongue touching your teeth’s sockets rather than your teeth themselves. » With quicker movements, he started adding other signs. « In the second row, under tinco, there is ando, then come thúle, anto, númen and… I shall leave out the sixth row, for now. » The quill rested in his hand for a moment, and he found out yet again that explaining in detail how his alphabet worked, and explaining it to a lay, to someone who knew nothing of the discipline, was difficult and tiring. Which was also why he only gave lectures and did not teach classes. He took much knowledge for granted and realising that, at times, it had to be explained was almost vexing.
« When the bow is doubled », he added, pointing at the second row, « the voiceless letter turns into a voiced one. Tinco does not make our throat vibrate, but ando does. Raising the vertical stem above the bow, instead of below, turns the occlusive into the corresponding fricative– that is, air passes through a narrow channel and is not stopped. Tinco is the occlusive, thúle is the fricative. The fourth row is peculiar to sounds of Quenya, they are clusters. Shortening the stem like in the fifth row turns the letter in a nasal. Air passes through our nose. And all of these variations are valid for the other three colums as well, only that sounds are no more articulated against our teeth but with other parts of our mouths. »
Fëanáro breathed in and twisted the quill between his fingers. « I trust that a Vala does not need me to repeat what I say more than once, even if it is the first time that he hears of such notions. But I would not be surprised if you asked me why I feel the need to attach so many informations to little glyphs. Would you ask that, Melkor? If you would, then I tell you: letters are not part of our beings. We are born with voices, with the involuntary instinct to breathe, with the need to eat, but remembering how to write means using memory, and creating a way to write means understanding the mechanism. Much like we need to understand how to farm the land, if we wish to make grow what can bloom with a single note of Yavanna’s voice. I made my Tengwar fewer than the Sarati, and thus easier to remember and to use, but that required much understanding. For you see, sometimes what looks easier is what has required the longest work. » He raised his brows and dipped the quill yet again.
« If you have no questions, I shall proceed. »
“They struggle to understand needs that are not their own, and fail”
He at once felt a stirring of resentment and understanding; he’d been the recipient of the Valar’s incomprehension time enough, and now he had the uncomfortable sensation that he had overlooked, nay, willfully discounted, many things due to that same loftiness. It was something he would consider in the future, when calculating his own advantage— but it left an unpleasant feeling in his head, like the buzzing of an insect he could not see, and so he cast the thoughts aside.
It worried him to know that an elf could hear and record the speech of his brethren; that a lesser being could comprehend the divine dialect seemed to him like water running uphill. It was unnatural, shocking— intriguing. Just the sort of information he could tuck away for later use. He felt a small, whimsical swell of admiration for the sheer transgression of these simple creatures, spying on his brothers and sisters in council, learning their tongue. (He presumed they were spying. Even if they had been invited to attend, he was certain that the Valar took for granted the inability of the Children to understand them in their native speech.)
Fëanáro returned to his seat with a hiss of red silk. A sheet of cream-colored parchment slid between them. Quill touched paper;
A little symphony in susurrus. His ears twitched in anticipation.
The principle introduced was such a simple one he felt ashamed for not guessing it immediately— and yet, the longer he thought upon the trouble of producing a sign for every sound a mouth could make, the prospect became dizzying. But he nodded when the prince looked to him for response.
The first glyph was introduced. “Tinco”— Sharp sounds, like sparks from a fire. He watched his host’s mouth articulate the sound, while the quill scratched a little black line and hook onto the sheet with careful elegance.
Immediately, he felt the beginnings of a war within his brain. I already know what that sound is, get on with it! Screamed one voice, while another shouted equally loud, Stop! There’s no room in my head for this! Melkor inhaled and licked his lips, discreetly making claw marks in the table as he took measures to clear the slate of his mind.
“Tinco”, he repeated, and mouthed silently the postures of tongue and throat that Fëanáro described, testing the feel of them as if for the first time, though he’d been speaking them for an age.
It made perfect sense, what was being said. Each little sound was a particle making up a whole, each whole strung together to form an image in the mind, each image placed in context within a larger system of meaning. He understood this— he’d built the structure for gold, for carbon, atom by atom in his mind, before Singing it into the map of existence. Of course he understood! And yet…
Resistance. Or no, rather, slipperiness, was making sounds and information slosh about. There was no place for it to be stored, so it simply toppled through his head and out his ears again as soon as it entered. He struggled to remember what he’d just heard—
His secret grip on the table increased. Within he grasped at the fluttering shreds of knowledge he’d held intact for an instant before they’d been blown away by a fresh gust of information. He was drowning, but he did all he could to keep the signs of it from showing on his face.
“…I would not be surprised if you asked me why I feel the need to attach so much information to little glyphs. Would you ask that, Melkor?”
The Vala blinked. What? Suddenly he was reintroduced to the present conversation. How much time had passed? Seconds. He felt ill.
Fëanáro explained how he’d made his system of writing easier and simpler than the one before it. “What looks easier has required the longest work.”
Melkor felt himself swallow on a dry throat. “I have no questions. Only—“ his eyes fluttered shut for an instant, dizzy. “…Give me a moment alone to think, and look at what you have written.”
A while back, an anon mentioned that they were scared to participate in the Silmarillion fandom. People hastened to assure them that we were a nice fandom! Friendly! Full of people to talk too! This is true. I think the problem is, though, that this is not the “Silmarillion” fandom. It’s the HoME fandom. People are expected to know all sorts of things that aren’t in the Silmarillion, whether they create or consume. People have to know that Maedhros has red hair or that Amrod died at Losgar in some versions. People have to know Quenya names and the meaning of those names, as well as basic vocabulary (ata, ammë, elleth, etc), because they’re used often in fic. People have to know about the thorn, about Gil-Galad’s questionable parentage. If you write something that is “wrong”, that is contradicted by something in HoME, people will correct you. Quickly. Kindly, but mercilessly. It’s not enough to have knowledge of just the Silm. It’s frightening. It shuts people out of the fandom, because they have to enter it with a huge amount of knowledge. This is very fun. It’s very interesting and exciting. There is always more to know. Debates and all sorts of interesting headcanons go on. Politics! Economics! Morality! Mathematics! Transhumanism! Fictional theology! These are all very exciting. But the fandom can be intellectually elitist, sometimes. There is no room to really be a beginner. There is so much else going on. lintamande was talking about feeling like an imposter, because she had only been in the fandom two years. I often feel like an imposter, because I haven’t read The Peoples of Middle Earth. I’ve only read eight out of twelve HoME books! I don’t know enough! I have lots of silm thoughts. Many I don’t type up. Some I don’t post. The ones I do post, I never tag. I am afraid that I will make a mistake, and people will Judge Me. I read a story once, with a female Fingon. Her name was given as ” Fingwen”. I was horrified. How could this person do that? Gah! *linguistic sobbing* But really. The fic was good. Should this person be expected to know the elements were “Fin” and “gon” instead of “Fing” “on”? Apparently, yes.
Hahahaha MAN DO I DO THIS. Correct kindly (at least I try) but mercilessly, I do it all the time. But I’m like… happier, when I tell people about some knowledge they haven’t yet? I expand their views! They can be enthusiastic about minor details with me! I don’t even realise if I’m over-correcting. I try to make others see what I see, probably not always succeeding. But hey, sometimes I do. I had at least three people telling me “I hated Feanor but then I read your reply to my post and now I see him under a different light” and my reaction was “HELL YEAH HELL FUCKING YEAH”. I want to get that when I “correct” people.
I probably forgot how it may feel for a beginner. I don’t even know how to fix this issue because you can bet I will go on answering to posts with different theories, new informations and even with disagreement. But if it may help, I am theorically an “imposter” too. I only ever really read the parts of HoME that concern Feanor and the House of Finwe, and some other stuff here and there. The rest… lmao.
OP, that is pretty much the clearest identification of this fandom I’ve yet seen. XD Spot on, well done. Whether we like it or not, this corner of Tumblr really is the Tolkien Apocrypha fandom. More than half the stuff we take for granted as “true” about the Silmarillion was actually gleaned from H.o.M.E. or the Appendices or the exhaustive work of Tolkien scholars from across the decades. I don’t think I even remember finding out some of this stuff– I just absorbed it via tumblr-osmosis.
And OH MAN, Hweanaro said it: I think if you really grilled most of us in the H.O.M.E. fandom, you’ll find that most of us are “imposters” in some way or another. XD MOST of us have a niche. Most of us have an area or areas of expertise that we’ve expanded our knowledge on because we were restless and unsatisfied with the bare-bones information given to us in the Silmarillion-proper. I myself have read every passage that mentions either dark lord, but frequently have to look up the names of elves and UGH QUENYA, WHAT A PAIN I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU’RE SPEAKING YOU’RE ALL ORC PROTOTYPES. But the longer I stay here, the more I get excited about new topics and want to expand my information base, because other fans are super excited about their niches, and make me want to get into them! 🙂
…I’ve made a lot of friends here, and I’ve produced a lot of work here. I love this fandom and the people in it. –But I also know there are huge incompatible rifts in the fandom and all it takes is the “wrong” opinion voiced in front of a certain crowd for this oh-so-polite-and-friendly fandom to turn nasty real quick. We do tend to divide ourselves into different groups based on various polemic issues, some of them based in Tolkien Mythos and “canonicity”, and some of them based in more universal fandom topics like character diversity or female representation or problematic fetishization or responsible exploration of triggery subjects, etc. etc. etc…. THE LIST GOES EVER ON AN ON.
It is, as you say, Tremendous Fun! But it’s a prickly fandom, and the barrier to entry is high. 😦 And I wish it wasn’t! I really, really do try to be as inclusive and approachable as I can– I WANT new fans to come here and explore their ideas while they’re starting their journey, because that’s how we get NEW IDEAS, DAMNIT. And yet, I know that I’ve lost some perspective, just because this has been my exclusive fandom haunt for about two and half years now, and I’ve absorbed so much fandom opinion and canon alike that it’s quite difficult to remember what it was like before knew where all the wobbly steps were.
(…and take all this with a huge grain of salt because not only am I speaking from a limited perspective, but I have not eaten yet today),
If we are shutting out people who have only read the Silmarillion, we have a huge problem. New interpretations don’t come from just finding an Opinion Camp and settling down in it. Getting pounced on for some canonical minutia when you’re just stretching your wings can be imagination death. There HAS TO BE some protective growth-room for new readers who want to share their ideas. If you find yourself getting ready to launch a diatribe against a new reader for an opinion they just formed about a character you’ve been stanning for years, GIVE THEM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. And for fuck’s sake, give them TIME.
I managed to avoid the Silm Correction Death by joining the fandom pretty late in the game– I’d done a lot of reading and thinking before I joined. I’d already established a pretty firm idea of what MY Arda looks like, and what’s more, I joined with a very, very concrete goal in mind: I wanted to write and draw my comic, then share my comic, then retire.
…Ahahahaha. BUT SERIOUSLY–
When I want to connect with the material I love and find a new way to explore it, I MUST step away from the fandom. Things like my comic or my drabbles and my own headcanons have to happen with a modicum of isolation, or else they are blown away by the first passing whiff of judgment. (Or… that USED to be true, but now I live in a blissful, fuckless state, where I generally don’t care what people think :D)
An important bit of advice to new fans and old?:
The idea of having a “’Verse” has been crucial to my creative boundaries as a fan. As long as I keep my ideas as safe behind the impenetrable wall of “MY ARDA ‘VERSE”, I don’t have to take any guff from canon OR fanon. It’s My ‘Verse, my rules! And I also feel less inclined to criticize interpretations that don’t jive with mine! It’s their ‘Verse, their rules! It doesn’t infringe on mine.
The Wesley!Verse is a safe place for me to create, and get in touch with what my “original” ideas are– However, what I consider ““my”” Arda ‘Verse is totally riddled with cool ideas that other people have helped me arrive at, whole segments that were developed in tandem with fellow roleplayers, or were borrowed en-masse from someone who had better-developed ideas about certain places or characters than I did! It is GOOD to mingle, if only to break out of your own niche. 🙂 But the permeability of your ‘Verse is yours to decide– how much you want to let other people reach in is up to you.
I think, maybe, we would all benefit from treating each new fandom arrival and fandom veteran alike as a distinct, mutually recognizable, Arda-‘Verse-in-development.
That’s why I think it is important, when new fans ask my opinion on something or want to know if something is “true” or not, to make a clear distinction between what is “canon” and what is “real”; meaning, this is what Tolkien wrote, but whether or not it is “real” in your given ‘Verse is entirely up to you. –Inform when solicited, but don’t “correct”. To “correct” assumes a level of cohesiveness in canon that we really, really don’t have? : And anyway, canon or not, this is collective mythmaking. This is a book series with no agreed-upon visual designs, no Peter Jackson movies, and more contradicting and confusing sets of canon than the New Testament.
While there is a certain pedantic joy in sitting around like a bunch of old rabbis debating whether or not the author meant this-or-that, or whether or not ONE set of books is more canonical than another, or whether or not the editor obscured some passage’s original meaning, those debates are the privilege of people who have had the time/energy/enthusiasm to chew through a whole geological strata of tomes, some of which aren’t even in circulation anymore.
You don’t have to be a HoME veteran to have a really beautiful and unique vision of the text that’s worth sharing, but if we treat the value of a new interpretation based on its understanding of the, frankly, kabbalic expanse of canon, thenwe are doing it wrong. Silm fans -may- actually be different from HoME fans, but WHO CARES, we should NOT BE SCARING THEM AWAY.
I mean… I understand that it can be uncomfortable for someone who’s been in the fandom for years to interact with a fan who is just starting the Silmarillion. It’s like… watching a puppy go up stairs, or else it’s like watching an enthusiastic bull in a china shop: You either want to help them up to the good bits faster, or steer them away from the delicate bits that you worked so hard to arrange. Sometimes the impulse to be a gatekeeper is strong. But what, and who are you keeping out? What are you keeping them from? If all you’re protecting is your sense of superiority, then nah friend, sit down.
Anyway, thank you OP for speaking up about this. I really want there to be a place for everyone in the Tolkien community.
There are a lot of cool designs out there! 🙂 I just thought it was interesting to see how various different artists have tackled the design based on Tolkien’s description.
Having the snakes meet under the flower crown, with “one upholding and the other devouring” really plays hell with the symmetry of your ring. >:I (I’m still trying to find a unique take on it for my own design…)
It’s worth keeping in mind that this ring is old as balls. Even with your classy Noldor craftsmanship, I doubt that a lot of frills and raised jewels would have weathered the ages intact. I prefer the designs that look like they could have been worn by a line of sword-wielding Edain badasses all the way from Barahir down to Aragorn without snagging on their tunics!
Here’s the Peter Jackson movie version… The one you see Aragon wearing at some point.
And the fan-made “Born of Hope” movie version…
Zelphalya on DA — AAAAWWW! ;w; THE LITTLE TONGUE STICKING OUT! I can’t even…
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 