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Crow Digital Painting by Ash Thompson

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Sauron and hair

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God I'm having so many thoughts about Touga Kiryuu. (TW: sa and csa allusions)

You're a child and your parents tell you you're being sold. You have to grow out your hair because that's what the customer wants. You assume the customer will be your new parent. You grow your hair out because you know nothing else than doing what you're told.

You finally meet the customer. Customer. Not new parent. You don't know what you're being sold as. You think you're there to be a child. And you are. But not in any way you ever wanted to be.

For the first time, you want to do something other than what you're told. No, you must do something else. You have to do something else. You cannot live like this anymore, with no power, no say in what the customer (he wants you to call him father, but this man is worse than any father you've ever known) does to you.

You see your chance. You run away. You run and you run and you run but it's not enough. You're too small. Too weak. And the customer is too strong, too powerful. You have no choice. You give up.

He catches you. He calls you beautiful.

Years go by this way. You push away your friends and then do everything you can to keep them close. But you can't let them know you care. You can't let anyone know you care. Caring makes you weak. It makes you vulnerable. Your hair gets longer. You're beautiful, he says.

Then, you meet a man who tells you he can make you strong. He's gorgeous and he's attentive and he's beautiful, but he's still powerful. And you realize beauty can give you immense power. He teaches you things, things you had thought you knew, but he makes them better. And it's different, you tell yourself. It's different when it's him because you want it now. You want to be like him so you must learn from him, and it's different. You're older. More mature. But not as mature as he is.

He calls you beautiful.

You learn from him. You weave words together beautifully. People want to do things for you. People love you. People want you. And you have the power to deny them. Keep them wanting. Make them beg. Make them chase you, but they can't catch you.

No one will ever catch you again.

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I neeeeed to know what Celegorm would think of Dior being married in your onesided Celegorm/Dior ship. Like would he be jealous of Nimloth? Would he try to get in between her and Dior? Would he not care?

now that's a juicy question anon ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

my gut tells me that celegorm wouldn't really be jealous of nimloth per se in the typical way. he'd be more like "well it's only natural that you would fall in love with someone as breathtaking lovely incomparable sublime and awe-inspiring as eluchil!" if he's envious of anything it would probably be of the fact that she got to have the experience of getting freaky with dior, and multiple times at that. i wouldn't put it past him to approach her and go "so what was eluchil like in bed"

i also think he'd be weirdly competitive with her in a "i love him more than you ever could, i would worship him the way he deserves" kind of way. it's a one-sided competition of course, and delusional to boot; nimloth just finds him creepy and hates him

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More from Shall these Bones Live by @undercat-overdog

+ one of my fav scenes with Sauron Being Horrible (again)

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Leto II: Arranging this meeting with Siona is a very delicate matter, Moneo. She will consider us sus.

Moneo: ….’sus,’ my lord?

Leto II: Yes, Moneo, Sus. An ancient expression, a contraction of the word ‘suspicious’ coined in the days of pre-Butlerian Jihad decadence.

Moneo: *thoughtfully* ‘Sus…’ 

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If Duncan hadn’t gotten involved and Hwi ended up sleeping with Moneo like Leto wanted, do you think Leto would’ve watched? Like, been in the room?

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I have an unhealthy obsession with him your honor.

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turning over the question of the silm unreliable narrator and the thing is for a text to have an unreliable narrator, it has to have internal contradictions or improbabilities that signpost its unreliability to us. one of the few places that this happens is in the leithian tale. the narrative very much illustrates to us how much of the heavy lifting luthien is doing in freeing beren from tol sirion, getting them into angband, putting morgoth to sleep and then getting out.

however, when this passage is narrativised later, at the start of the final chapter on earendil & the war of wrath, this is how it is told: "...which Beren had won and Lúthien had worn...".

in other words, luthien is reduced to a passive actor. someone who bears the jewel, but is erased from having played a substantial part in actually, actively winning it from morgoth. we actively do see a sexist bias playing out, in reaffirming the men transform the world, women give birth ("for the nissi the making of things new is for the most part shown in the forming of their children, so that invention and change is otherwise mostly brought about by the neri", LaCE).

given the direct contradictions in the description of how the silmaril was won in the beren & luthien chapter, we can point to this one instance of unreliability.

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It's truly impossible to tell just what kind of themes fujimoto is trying to convey here. unfathomable writing, honestly.

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tell me im wrong

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consider: pathetic businessman griffith

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the PBG brainrot has been spreading and i couldn’t be happier

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Can we PLEASE talk about Guts reaction to seeing Griffith again?!?!?

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childhood friends Anairë and Eärwen :)

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Say Dune is allowed one f bomb, where are we putting it?

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just finished god emperor of dune and i have to say that on one hand it makes me extremely happy that siona didn't become leto's secretary like her father did and instead succeeded spectacularly in her plan to take him out, on the other hand it fills me with incandescent rage that the person she's settled with at the end of it all is the worst duncan idaho iteration in all six books