Life Hack: Romanticize leaving your house by playing the LOTR soundtrack and pretending you’re going on a noble quest for the good of Middle Earth instead of going to class or to the grocery store to get eggs.
i’ve seen gimleaf fics where they each try to find out how to court by the other’s traditions. and i love those, so i think they ought to be taken a step further. and i think the way to do that would be, naturally, to make bagginshield real. allow me to explain why. ahem. after the ring is destroyed, girlfailure legolas spends two weeks poring over The Ancient Texts and stressing because his one (1) friend who WOULD help him (that’s aragorn) knows jack shit about dwarves beyond the surface (no pun intended) (well gandalf knows things but gandalf is a bitch) (he would just smile at legolas knowingly and wish him good luck instead of giving him answers).
so alas, girlfailure “shit tier ass elf” legolas is left to like, idk, sulk or something in the garden he starts at the Bestie Residence in minas tirith. and after like 2 days sam’s had enough he’s like “dude your vibes are upsetting the plants.” and legolas is like “my bad bro. it just seems i know nothing about dwarves which i probably should’ve thought about before, by elf standards, getting hitched in vegas.” and sam is like “oh dwarves? just ask mister frodo ^_^ he knows tons about dwarves!” and legolas is like “what the shit? him in particular? why does he anything about dwarves?” and sam leans in reaaaalllllll close and whispers behind his hand, “well you see mister elf, mister legolas, sir, there’s always been a very healthy amount of rumors that go around in the shire about mister frodo’s uncle, mister bilbo, and the letters he used to exchange with a certain king under the mountain.” and legolas, who was THERE, is like
rewatching lotr, and rewatched the hobbit trilogy like 2 weeks ago, and i must say. i love this franchise for all its “i knew a guy who knew a guy” relations. like to give just one example, gimli presumes for a second, like the whole fellowship, that frodo got injured by the cave troll in moria. but he’s actually just fine! because frodo just happens to be gimli’s dad’s boss’s situationship’s nephew, and therefore has the mithril shirt that gimli’s dad’s boss gave to his situationship right before gimli’s dad’s boss led the company to battle against, among others, legolas’s dad. legolas’s old situationship from like last year (60 years ago) was also there and chose, get this, gimli’s dad’s boss’s nephew over him. i love yall
For 153 days, we’ve seen Palestinians taking care of not only fellow humans by sharing food with each other, helping save people from under the rubble, carrying random bloody strangers to hospitals, and lending a helping hand at any given, but we’ve also seen them, constantly, taking care of animals during the genocide.
Writing Tip - What ‘Habit Over Motivation’ Actually Looks Like
We’ve all heard the writing advice that you can’t rely on motivation to get you through writing a book, sometimes you need to force yourself to do it and make a habit of it. And a lot of us will scoff at that or find it too restrictive or boring, it leaves us feeling like it’s a chore rather than a fun activity
As someone who only worked out what people actually mean by it recently, let me explain my take on it
You’re not always going to be inspired to write, you’re not always going to be motivated to write, but if you only write when you’re motivated it’s gonna take a crap ton of time - and writing anything to completion already takes donkey’s years as it is. Forming a habit is going to enable you to write consistently, and thus even unmotivated or uninspired progress is still made. Hence, sometimes you have to force yourself to write
But writing too much will make that habit impossible, or at least it becomes a chore and not a fun activity. You need to give yourself realistic goals to meet, even if it’s only something small. Write for ten minutes a day, write 500 words every week, any snail’s pace progress regardless of how insignificant it may seem. Something small enough that it doesn’t drain you but frequent enough that there’s still a habit being formed, there’s still consistency to it
I used to only write when I was inspired and motivated and could get myself to start writing, and even then the word count would be inconsistent. It could be weeks or even months between proper writing sessions. But now that I have a baseline for productivity, I have a baseline for consistent progress. And I’m only on 1K words a week! And if that doesn’t work, you can do less, or go by time spent writing if that’s a better metric for your writing style!
There’s no such thing as not enough progress when it comes to forming a consistent habit; if you can get at least one word per deadline (day, week, whatever) then that still counts as consistent progress
What everyone else seems to think of is “You must get this big amount of words written daily, think of it as eternal NaNoWriMo, if you miss even one day you’re a failure and you’ll never get the book done, SUFFER FOR YOUR ART!”
Just do what’s comfortable and it’ll be fine, no worries
WOW! Long time no post, but that doesn't mean I haven't been up to stuff! I can finally share some of the things I've been working on as part of the @gospexchange
This short-but-sweet little comic is a gift for @deathly-shipper based on the song Céu Azul by Ana Gabriela
I had a lot of fun making this, the song is very sweet and cozy and I hope I captured the vibes you were looking for!
Here's an AO3 link if tumblr makes the quality stinky!