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that-angry-noldo · 1 year

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The Gilded Cage,

the world of dreams

Orodreth dies. Orodreth dies, but his spirit is caught and locked, added to the dragon's hoard. The reality mends and twists, creating a new life for the dead king.

CWs: unreality, implied character death

[This is my @officialtolkiensecretsanta gift for @elyksina! Merry Christmas and happy New Year!]

You are tired.

You are lying on the ground, staring into the thick grey mist through the half closed eyes.

Eru, you are tired.

Orodreth woke up. His chambers were still dark.

He could feel Finrod awake several rooms away - he was certain the man hadn't even slept. Orodreth sighed.

He supposed it was his call to get up.

"Did you sleep good?" Finrod said, trying to break the deafening silence of the breakfast. Orodreth looked up.

"You weren't even sleeping, Uncle."

"Oh," Finrod looked aside, reaching for the butter. He stopped midway through, looked away, stilled. Pulled back. "Oh. Yeah, right, I wasn't sleeping. I still want you to sleep well, kid."

Orodreth sighed. "I'm not a kid a few hundred years already, Uncle. There was that paperwork I needed to work through, right?"

"Gwindor!"

Finduilas giggled, pushing away the dark-haired ellon, and hurried to Orodreth.

Orodreth smiled at the elf-lord.

Gwindor's face remained stone-cold. Gwindor grinned back.

It is over. It is over.

You lost.

Dust settles in your lungs, and you cough.

It's alright. You will be dead within hours anyway.

"Did you sleep well, Artaresto?" Finrod grinned, addressing him during a lively breakfast. Orodreth saluted him with his coffee.

"Better than ever, Uncle," he smirked, ignoring the ever present feeling of dread, doom dangling on a thin hair above his head, and passed the jam to Celebril.

"Oh," Finrod grinned. "I'm sure your father would love to hear that!"

"My-"

Dirty hands grab you, and you gasp for air - no, you'll be dead, you'll be dead, you'll be-

You miscalculated, little gold, didn't you?

"Better than ever, Uncle," he smirked and passed the jam to Finduilas. "It's a shame father… isn't here with us. He'd be glad knowing we're doing alright."

Finrod's face softened. "Yeah," he smiled. "I think he would."

It's funny. It's funny! You thought you'd escape - you thought something as inconvenient as death would save you.

Poor, poor little gold.

It's alright. I'll keep you safe.

I'll keep you in check.

"No," Orodreth sighed, rubbing his temples. "Please, this decoration goes here. Yeah, like that. A bit to the left. Perfect, thank you."

"This looks spectacular," Finrod said, coming from behind. "You truly outdid yourself, nephew."

"Thanks," Orodreth smiled softly. "I want the wedding to be nothing but ideal, Uncle. Thank you for your help."

"I understand," Finrod took a sip of wine from his glass. "And it's nothing, I was bored out of my mind anyway. Can I ask you a question, though?"

"Sure," Orodreth shrugged, not taking his eyes off the decoration.

"Why have you chosen gold?"

"Wha- Uncle- these are clearly white."

"Are they?" Finrod whispered, and Orodreth turned to him.

"Were you sleeping well, Artaresto?" the dead king asked, looking at him with empty eyes, and Orodreth-

"I understand," Finrod took a sip of wine from his glass. "And it's nothing, I was bored out of my mind anyway. Can I ask you a question, though?"

Orodreth inhaled. "No, I- I don't think I'm in the mood for questions, Uncle."

"Oh! Oh, that's alright," Finrod said, surprised. "No, it's fine. Do you need some wine?"

"No, I don't," Orodreth whispered. "I have to go now. Thanks for help."

"Finduilas said hi," Finrod threw to his back. Orodreth hurried out of the room.

The decorations were golden. The hallway was endless.

It was fine,

it is fine, it is fine, it is fine it is it is, little gold. You're fine. You're alright.

You're so amusing, by the way.

They were in the middle of a sunflower field.

"Hi," Angrod said, and Orodreth's breath hitched. He fell into his father's arms.

"Dad," he sobbed, and his shoulders shook. Tears ran down his cheeks and fell on Angrod's soft robe. "Dad, dad-"

"Hey, it's alright," Angrod whispered, rocking him back and forth. "It's alright. You're safe. You're safe now."

"Dad, dad, dead, dead-"

"Shhh," his father whispered, kissing his forehead. "It's alright. Stay with me."

Stay with him, huh? It would be a fun scenario to watch now, wouldn't it?

… I'll let it play out. I've got a whole eternity here with you anyway.

He was lying in the field. The skies were purple.

"It's peaceful, isn't it?"

"How are you here?" Orodreth scoffed.

Finrod shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not real."

"You- you are."

"Huh. That's new, little gold."

"Don't call me that."

"As if I have a choice," Finrod said. "Were you sleeping well?"

The sky was pink. The sun was setting.

The sunflower field was endless.

"Finrod's been all weird lately," Orodreth proclaimed, walking in the room. Angrod was pouring tea in his cup.

"That's Uncle Finrod for you, Artaresto," he scolded, but smiled soon enough. "In what way was he weird?"

"We were talking," Orodreth said, sitting in a chair. "He called me-"

"He called me-"

"He-"

Come on, Artaresto. You can do it.

"Artaresto?"

"Artaresto, are you alright?"

Are you sleeping well, little gold?

Come on, Orodreth. Wake up. Please, I can't be with you any longer-

"You're- you're-"

"Hey, hey, everything's fine, alright? I'm here, you're here-"

"Dad-"

"It's alright, I'll make you some tea. You love- you love mint, don't you? Yep, mint and honey, mint and-"

The tea tastes like nothing, Orodreth thought absently. The tea tastes like nothing. I'm surrounded by flowers, and yet they have no smell. It's evening, but I feel no cold.

"Dad."

"Or do you want some warm milk? I can do that, I can do that too-"

"Atya!"

Angrod stilled and turned to his son.

His eyes were too blue and his movements were too stiff.

"I have not been sleeping well," Orodreth whispered. "I-"

"Ever since Bragollach," he choked. "Ever since you- ever since you and Uncle and Celebril-"

"Oh," Angrod whispered, and the next second his arms were around Orodreth, hugging him tightly. "Oh, Artaresto."

"You're dead," Orodreth whispered. "You're dead. Uncles are dead. Finduilas- Finduilas is dead."

"I am dead, too."

Angrod didn't move.

Orodreth inhaled and laid his father on the ground. Angrod's hands were cold and unmoving.

"I don't want to sleep forever," Orodreth whispered. "I don't want to sleep forever, but there is no escape."

Your new world is beautiful, in the same way a gilded cage may look perfect to its owner.

Sometimes, you are in a field, surrounded by beautiful flowers that never had a smell. Sometimes, the sky is painted in unreal colours. Sometimes, the sun is almost warm, almost alive.

Sometimes, you're in the middle of empty cities, with chimeras staring at you from sharp roofs, with architecture twisted in the most beautiful, in the most distorted way.

You're always alone. Your world is always empty, safe for the golden eyes of your beast warden.

There are no sounds.

There are no tastes.

There are no smells.

You start forgetting. You're too tired to keep fighting.

Until,

The world cracked, and Orodreth thought he was dying for the second time.

He was dying, because the world screeched and roared and twisted and Orodreth heard, Orodreth heard for the first time- for the first time in eternity, and he screamed and fell and it was pain and it was agony and

and Turin stood with black sword in his hands, blood hissing on its blade,

and Orodreth screamed and ran to him,

but he fell,

and he was falling and falling and falling and falling and then

Orodreth died.

His father cried and reached to him with bodiless arms.

"I'm sorry," Finrod said for the hundredth time. "I'm so sorry I couldn't do more."

"It's alright," Orodreth whispered.

The sea was dark and grey. A seagull cried in the distance, and wind brushed his cheek, and it smelled of salt and algae.

It was cold, and the rock underneath him was rough, but it was so unmistakingly, so goddamn alive.

Orodreth wanted to cry.

"It's alright. After all, I'm not asleep anymore."

#official tolkien secret santa #silmarillion #tolkien #orodreth #finrod #by accident this has major wandavision vibes #now! some trivia!#orodreth can't see those who aren't dead. that's why at some point finrod disappears #finrod is somewhat self-aware because a) he is almost alive already and b) he was a kind of mentor figure during orodreth's life #think of him as of agatha in wandavision: he's aware he's in a play but he also tries to give orodreth hints about that #(hence mention about angrod during nargothrond breakfast and mention of finduilas during the wedding preparations)#orodreth stops seeing people the second he becomes aware of the «cage»#anyways this was a disaster i finished it a few days ago and accidentaly deleted the draft. it was still fun writing it!#merry christmas!!#tss2022

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aragornsrockcollection · 2 years

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Tolkien, in the thirties, after being asked by a German publishing house if he was Aryan: If you Germans continued in this fashion, being German will no longer be something to be proud of, and also your use of the word Aryan is not linguistically accurate, so chew on that.

Germans in the thirties: Continue in that fashion, to put it lightly.

Tolkien: I warned you!

Tolkien: Makes the word “Goth” mean “enemy” in elvish, and names the incarnation of evil “Morgoth”

Tolkien: And it serves you right!

#you showed them #please forgive this post my meds are being adjusted and its screwing with my sleep #so now ya’ll get unlikely speculation of Tolkien choosing the word goth to mean enemy cause of the nazis #more likely he was thinking of the germanic goths #but the historical goths who helped topple rome and bring about the middle ages #with the latin-esc quality of how Quenya is viewed in middle earth #we can safely assume the Noldor had some Roman Empire vibes #not direct ones #just enough that naming their downfall after the goths feels appropriate #but it amuses me to think this was instead Tolkien’s petty linguistic revenge on the germans #even if it’s totally just me making stuff up #tolkien #the silmarillion #silmarillion #jirt #jrr tolkien #morgoth #elvish #bad linguistics #genuinely im dizzy and its so late its early #love it when we mess with my brain chemically

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mariniacipher · 2 years

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aragorn’s heart is in rivendell 🥺

that is v sweet. now if only aragorn and eowyn are more interesting that in the movies- /lh

#lotr newsletter #lotr #v slightly light-hearted #their romance was so boring in the movies #pls tell me she has some agency in the books #also pls tell me even more that tolkien leaned into courtly love and such #i think it would fit their relationship #and fit the vibe

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the-heaminator · 1 year

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Because you’re my Russian lit mutual

Yknow what that's actually fair

#There is a very specific vibe from Doestoyevsky novels #Tolstoy feels more like Tolkien in some fucked up way and we dont talk about pushkin #Froggi!#Doestoyevsky

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mihrsuri · 2 years

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Galadriel is so so interesting because just…all the family history and pain tangled up in (hi Feanor!) and also that her brother lost his life for love, for loyalty (to Beren and to Luthien) above all because Finrod is The Best. It just fascinates me, all of it.

#tv: rings of power #they probably cannot talk about Beren/Luthien etc because rights but !!!!#lil the tolkien dork #there’s some Feanor Vibes going on

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marta-bee · 2 years

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In all fairness to the Amazon show, Tolkien only gave a big fat nein to any illustrators pulling from the Disney school of dwarves. He never said word one about the Keebler school of elves.

#i am half kidding here #but some of the screenshots coming out of the show do have a certain ... vibe let's say #amazon lotr #tolkien

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comicaurora · 1 year

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do you have any tips on writing soft magic systems? I only ever see them talked about when people are comparing it to hard magic systems or criticising it, which is a shame because I love systems where magic is just in the background being unimportant, with implied rules that will never be explained

god I wrote up like eight paragraphs of explanation and I was really working out some cool stuff there and then the app glitched and destroyed it all and I'm so upset

Unfortunately this reduces to a previous problem, which is "figure out how Tolkien did it and then do that."

Middle Earth is laden with magic. Hobbits being good at hiding is magic. There's a random throne in the ruins at the end of Fellowship that lets whoever sits in it see literally the entire world, and that's hella magic. Aragorn radiates One True King magic and occasionally heals people with a touch. Galadriel's mirror lets people see any point in time, past or future. Gandalf knows several spells, but most of the time he's doing less granular stuff by making lights or small fires or going all Servant Of The Secret Fire Wielder Of The Flame Of Anor etc etc. Elves are inherently so magical that the words of their language are never forgotten by anyone who hears them, the laws of physics don't apply to them, their havens are magically pleasant and beautiful, and the planet itself is magical for them - flat for the elves, round for everybody else.

The benefit of a soft magic system is that it produces a feeling in the characters and audience that the world is vast, wonderful and unknowable. It's at its best when it can answer why, but not how.

Why did the old empire of men have a throne that let you see the entire world? That makes sense! It's hugely tactically advantageous! HOW did they get the damn thing? No idea, doesn't matter, they clearly made it work somehow because the throne's right there. Why does Galadriel's mirror give you limited, randomized omniscience? Because while it's a useful tool if you can use it, seeing the future is a dicey and weird game, and the future can change if someone knows it's coming. HOW does riverwater in a birdbath do that? No idea.

Soft magic systems start running into difficulties when the writer needs to decide how it can or can't solve a given situation, which is a very common issue in storytelling, a format almost entirely centered on problems and solutions. For hard magic systems with clear parameters on what is and isn't possible, this is comparatively quite easy. The wizard can't magic this problem away because-

They're out of spell slots :(

They don't know a specific spell that can do that specific thing

There's another caster nearby stopping them

The object that lets them do magic isn't working

They need to speak words/do gestures/use materials to cast, and they can't for whatever reason

There's something "antimagic" around stopping them

Etc etc. The possibilities are easy to run through, because the "how" is clearly defined, and can be negated into a "how NOT." If magic uses spell slots, stop the characters using it by taking those slots away. If magic needs a material focus, break or destroy it. This prevents magic from feeling like an unsatisfying "a wizard did it" fix for all difficulties because the wizards can only do specific things under specific circumstances.

Soft magic systems can contrive answers to this too, but it can be a bit tricky to justify, and if it's Too Convenient it can feel like the magic system really just does what the writer needs it to do. When asked "why can't magic solve this problem?" soft magic systems can answer in several ways:

Too tired, sorry :( magic is Taxing and stuff so the caster can tip over whenever's convenient

They're in a Bad Vibes zone that's hindering their ability to cast because soft magic can be impeded by soft problems like "somebody was very mean here once"

That specific magic is tied to a specific location, like a magical elf forest, and doesn't work outside of it because it's intrinsic to the place and can't be replicated

There's another magical being around and their kung-fu is more powerful

These explanations work, but that's conditional on the story not making the audience think the magic SHOULD work in this situation, and this is entirely based on what's been established in the story thus far. If the wizard has been able to fly up until now, parking the gang at the bottom of the cliff and saying "sorry, fly machine broke" feels contrived. But if we've only ever seen other, intrinsically magical beings fly, the audience is unlikely to expect that the party's humble wizard will suddenly bust out a set of feathery wings as a gift from baby jesus himself. On the writing side, it's really a matter of feeling it out and making sure nothing feels too jarring - if the character who's previously displayed a certain specific space of abilities suddenly does something completely unrelated (like going from clairvoyance to slinging fireballs, or from a healing touch to earthbending) that feels inconsistent AND it teaches the audience that this soft magic system is softer than they realized, and can then make it much harder for the writer to then convince them that this caster CAN'T spontaneously manifest a power or gimmick that'll save them. But if the magical characters or objects operate within a specific space - one character that specializes in fire, one object that specializes in remote viewing, one artifact that lets its holder control the winds - then the audience will expect and accept things that fit in those broad, soft categories without speculating too much on the underlying "how" of their mechanics.

But the temptation to explain "how" is very strong for writers, and soft magic systems especially have trouble with this, because soft magic systems start calcifying into fragmentary hard systems when they're forced to explain "how". It locks in a hard-defined axiom that can be logically extrapolated. Because a soft system is not DESIGNED for that kind of internal logic, doing that will usually cause axiomatic collisions as they contradict one another. If a hard system is a crisp, geometric crystalline structure where any tangent line drawn through it will intersect cleanly with other lines in very predictable ways, adding "how"s to a soft magic system is like drawing tangent lines through a bowl of pudding - you're gonna get a lot of intersections in awkward places.

To pull an example out of absolutely nowhere, if a soft system without clear rules establishes something like "this spell can be used to summon an object towards the caster, but it DOES NOT WORK on living things", there are a number of questions that can become relevant:

Who made that spell to have those limitations?

Why can't WE make spells that DON'T have that limitation?

How is the spell defining "living things"? Would it work on a plant or a skeleton or a piercing in someone's body?

Why did you let this character use it on a living thing anyway, joanne?

In a lot of soft systems that try to lock in hard spell parameters, "who made these spells" and "why can't WE make spells" become the first and most obvious axiomatic clash. If magic can be created to do what the caster wants, why and how does that work, and why can't WE do it? This forces the writer to come up with an explanation to solve the clash without letting the protagonists make up whatever spells they want, therefore solving all plot problems forever - sometimes something like "the inventors of spells were intrinsically magical beings, like elves or dragons or whatever, and thus we ordinary scrub mortals can't make new ones." That's a functional explanation, but it reduces to a previous problem again - that this hard-ish magic system was created by someone with access to an unstructured soft system.

In a soft magic system, the only answer to the question "how does this magical thing work" is "because magic." If any other explanation is needed, things rapidly collapse into hard lines and axioms and covering for edge cases. How can elves run on powder snow, shoot targets in the dark and see for hundreds of miles? They're magical. Does that mean they can fly like a balrog or sling fire like gandalf or control weather like saruman maybe can? No, of course not, that's not their kind of magic and we have no reason to expect it from them. They're just magic. Magic means a lot of different things, and in a soft system the audience has to operate based on vibes rather than rules.

This can be difficult to balance. For instance, Star Wars has a soft system in The Force, and if you squint, every single movie and show uses it differently. It's not super disruptive to the audience's immersion because it's never framed like a Hard System with Hard Rules and it almost never pulls something out of COMPLETELY nowhere, but if you look at what it does from movie to movie and then show to show, it expands from "influence the wills of the weak-minded", "seeing the future a little bit" and "force choking" to "general telekinesis" and "limited telepathy" to "FUCKING LIGHTNING FROM THE HANDS MAN" which is a hell of a twist the first time you see it, to some even more buckwild stuff in the two different animated Clone Wars (like Mace Windu fighting an entire droid army Samurai Jack style and using the force to pull every bolt out of one of them at once, or the planet with the living incarnations of the Light and Dark Side) and the explanation never goes further than "The Force is magic, it's in everything, people who are good at The Force can use it to do a buncha stuff." It's not consistent, it doesn't have rules, but the audience accepts that Force users can just kind of do stuff that fits the Vibes of the stuff it's already been shown it can do. And as SOON as they tried to say "The Force is strong in people who have LOTS OF MIDICHLORIANS" everybody hated it, because it gave us a "how" answer to a question nobody wanted to ask and it made this pervasive, wonderous, soft magic system that Surrounds And Binds Us Luminous Beings Are We into "we are space wizards because we contain an above-average number of bugs."

As a chronic worldbuilder myself, I absolutely understand the impulse to explain and overexplain and lock in the Hows and the Whys, but as far as I can figure it, soft magic systems live and die on the writer's ability to restrain themselves from saying "how." The answer is "magic." The rest is just writing the story in such a way that "magic" doesn't become plot-breaking.

#asks #writing stuff

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g3l3mb · 1 year

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how to generate creative ideas:

(i need to get this out of my brain)

Make moodboards, playlists, keep a list of people who inspire you. Before starting a project think about the general vibe you want it to embody. Ask questions like “What would this concept sound like if it was a song?” ,“What would this concept be like if it was a person?”. Create a shirt that looks like a building you like, literally anything can be combined.

Take unrelated things or concepts and mix them together. Let’s take Addams Family as an example. “What if it was a story about a typical suburban family…but GOTH!”. It basically flips everything upside down. Or “What outfit would someone wear, who’s personality is the mix of the vibes of these two songs?” Random word generators are amazing for this if you don’t know where to start from.

Try making something truly BAD and then add a twist to it. It’s a great way for your brain to let go of expectations and then think outside of the box. But you can also use this to find out what you do not wanna do under any circumstances.

Think without worrying about the limits of what you can do and when it’s time for excecution, find a way around what’s impossible. It births more creativity and adds uniqueness.

Consider what your idea is NOT before considering what it is. Limits are the best way to avoid getting overwhelmed and giving up. Don’t ALWAYS do this though (unless you wanna…), it’s just something to try out when you feel like you’re seeing too many possibilities to the point that they’re contradicting each other. Unless your goal is to make something full of contradictions, you’re a Free Man, do whatever you want.

Keep a list of random ideas you have throughout the day in your notes app or something and then at some point actually review them. Keep what you think is worth exploring and then act on it.

Find out how something works very throughoutly so you know which aspect can be changed to create something new.

Take a concept and break it down into smaller concepts, ideas, questions, key elements and then also break those ideas down etc. This will naturally lead to associations, unique ideas you wouldn’t think of without doing this. I found that this is a great way of coming up with metaphors.

This one is similar to the last two: take a piece of art you really love and try to find out the thought process behind. What’s the story, where did the artist get inspiration from, how did they incorporate those ideas in their work. How did an artist combine their personal interests and knowledge into one big thing. For example: Tolkien was an erudite linguist, so much so that he created entire functional languages in his work, such as Elvish in Lord of the Rings. Hirohiko Araki loves 80’s music so much he named characters in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure after music references. This is why no knowledge is useless knowledge.

Think about the times you’ve been the most creative before. What were the specific circumstances? For me my best ideas always come when I have a strict deadline for something unrelated, like school (which I’m way too willing to sacrifice), or when I’m doing something mindless like walking and listening to music, or playing a game that requires no thinking. Most of the time after 10p.m. This doesn’t mean I can’t “force” myself to be creative (tips above), it just means these are the times ideas come most naturally. For some people this might be being out in nature or experiencing high emotions, maybe having their life on the line idk, to each their own.

You can’t just create. You also need to consume. The more information you absorb, the more possibilities you have with your ideas. So if you’re not feeling that creative, that’s fine, it’s the perfect opportunity to learn something new.

If you don’t already do these things and you’re looking to get more creative my advice is to ACTUALLY TRY THESE OUT. You’ll best understand them in action.

#creative #writing #creative writing #art #artist #creativity #entp #enfp #infp #intp #art tips #writing tips #writing advice #art block #writers block #creative ideas

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