The Beast that Bothers

Odd interaction at the bookstore yesterday. Got summoned to the register in my capacity as Employee Who Knows About Old Books because a customer wanted to know what Don Quixote was about.

(Yes, this does mean that the employee already at the register wasn’t able to answer that question. I have a lot of “what are they teaching you in those schools?” interactions with my younger co-workers.)

Anyway, I gave the customer a quick synopsis. He asked if I’d recommend it, and I said I would, that it was not only well-written but also pretty accessible & engaging for a novel written four hundred years ago. Then he asked if he would “see things differently after reading it.”

He then elaborated that he really liked Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and wanted other books he read to have a similar paradigm-shifting effect.

(I haven’t read The Alchemist, specifically because every time someone recommends it to me they use this same kind of language, which makes me feel like they’re trying to get me to join a cult rather than read a book.)

Anyway, we are in a college town, so “young person who’s just learned what philosophy and poetry are and now thinks of themselves as Deep” is a Type of Guy we encounter fairly frequently.

(Just a few hours before this, I overheard a young man recommending a book to his female companion because it would “help with her creative energies”.)

So it’s not that this is particularly unusual in vibes, it’s more that… this seems like an odd standard to hold a novel to before you read it. And it’s an odd question to ask your local bookseller — “will this book change my life?” I dunno, man, I don’t know your life. Maybe it will, books do that sometimes.

Anyway, I told him “probably”, because honestly Don Quixote is a really good book and I think more people should read it. And, I dunno, maybe it will make him see things differently.

(It might even make him see novels as intrinsically worth reading rather than as vessels for personal change.)

I have no idea if that worked, because as mentioned I wasn’t at the register at the time. I went back to organizing the used books and didn’t see him again. Kind of hope he bought it.

(To be clear, at no point during this conversation was he holding a copy of Don Quixote. I had to instruct him to look under “C” for “Cervantes” if he decided he wanted to buy it. His curiosity was sparked by a set of novelty bookends.)

Injured elf soldier

OK. I have now posted 1,002,976 words on Ao3, and I am damn well going to finish writing Murder in Moria next.

I have 8,800 words of it already. HOW HARD CAN IT BE to get it finished???

@cuarthol's tag #beorian descendants in the wild made me spit out my drink. :-D

Obsessed with the old lady in the store I overheard say, "Well, you know me. I can't resist a gnome"

I was struck with how very long the House of Durin hung onto that last Ring, the Seventh Ring that the Elves of Eregion gave them directly. All the long years of Moria, and then almost 900 after that, when they had lost home after home and were seriously poor, and yet they kept Celebrimbor's Ring when they had lost nearly everything else.

Probably, doing that was why Thrain got snatched by the Necromancer.

So today I got a rather unkind comment on AO3 (one could call it hate), but I believe it to be a bot for several reasons:

Guest account, but username attached

Said username exists but person is unlikely to be reading Tolkien fic (according to their Tumblr and AO3, they are in other fandoms)

Two grammatically correct sentences

Super generic text that could apply to any fic:

"I've seen better fanfiction written by a toddler. Get it together!"

I'm curious, did anyone else get comments like this? Let me know.

And to those who have gotten rude comments and are now worried/upset: Maybe it was just a bot too. Either way: You're awesome for putting your writing out there for others to enjoy and you don't deserve to get rude comments for it. If you want feel free to message me to compare cases and discuss details :)

Celegorm and Huan see the Northern Lights. Aurora borealis photos kept appearing on the landscape blogs I follow, and I wanted to paint it. Would also like to paint the Helcaraxë (and get better at negative painting with the ice.) Close up pic because I'm happy with Huan's toe beans.

12 x 8", watercolor, gouache, Komorebi metallic watercolors, masking fluid, ink, white gel pen

just curious as they're always things i've never questioned just doing but people in my life are often surprised that i don't mind doing them alone

🔁 pls reblog for sample size

A is for Arondir.

I decided to redo my lotr alphabet illust set. I am Just much more into traditional média at the moment, I would like to have them all as one set I can flip through In person. But the letters I have added on digital. 🤔

Treebeard takes his pet hobbits for a walk.

This was so much fun to draw, really happy with how he looks, I think he turned out just as I imagined him in the series! I based him off an oak tree, I don’t believe he has a given tree in the books but I could be wrong lol.

Hey guys, I just got back from the flea market and this one jewelry table had some GREAT stuff! Anyone want anything? $5 each or best offer.

One more drawing based on a stress-relief doodle from a work meeting. The death of Fingon. This scene is so terrible and emotional(at least makes me emotional) and once again, I couldn't find enough artwork that captures it. So I made one myself. Also here, I wanted to make light that looks like tree-branches ♥

"Medieval people did this," "medieval people were like that" my dude there are people twenty miles away from me right now who would fight a man over regional differences in what we call water fountains, and we have the internet. You think a bunch of humans whose only contact with their neighbors three hundred miles up the road was some guy who took four weeks to get there on horseback plus also The Church (noted expert in all things that people do and like in every era, never argues with itself), all agree on how to take a bath or cook a turkey just because they happened to live in the same century? If my grandmother knew how some of my friends cook pasta she'd have a stroke. Please.

Day 3: Helcaraxë

Findaráto curled tighter on himself in his bedroll, crushed between Aikanáro and the tent wall. They were all piled together like a litter of kittens, him an his siblings, to ward off the biting cold of the outside. He could hear Artanis’ mumble in her sleep and Angaráto’s faint snores and, just out of the skin and fur wall, the wind howling over the Ice.

He tried to keep exhaustion at bay just a little longer, to savour this too rare moment of relative privacy. In the faint glow of the small lamp devised by his half-uncle, a necessity here on the Ice despite how much he wanted to throw the cursed thing away, Findaráto fished the small leather pouch he wore around his neck and opened it. With a trembling smile, he unrolled the slip of paper he kept there, worn smooth and thin with how many times he had read it over the years on the Ice.

My dearest Ingoldo,

I cannot wait to see you at the festival next month. I already miss you terribly.

Yours forever,

Amarië

Findaráto blinked tears away as he read the note over and over, trying not to wonder if Amarië loved him still. With a last, reverent brush of his lips on the paper, he rolled it back and tucked it away in the leather pouch. When sleep finally claimed him, Findaráto had composed yet another never-sent letter to his beloved in his mind.