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Absolutely love this song

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Listening to the Cocteau Twins always makes me happy

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standing and judging you with mama

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A Dark Mirror: face to face with Sam Hazeldine’s Adar

On Closeness at a Distance

Sam—or Sam as Adar—has been slipping under my skin lately, even showing up in dreams. He’s lingered in my thoughts ever since he appeared as the Lord-Father of the Uruk: Adar, one of the most compelling original creations in The Rings of Power.

A dark muse—for the showrunners, for fans, maybe even for Sam himself—he shaped the emotional core of Season 2 and left an indelible mark, even in fictional death.

Adar, a walker between worlds, both elf and orc, cruel and tender, morally ambiguous yet legitimately motivated, perpetrator and victim, maybe asexual, maybe pan, a deeply emotional figure who is - and that’s a point - holding on, fighting for his soul, a father doomed to die.

Sometimes, a character and a performer conjure a response so strong it rearranges your emotional interior—unearthing dormant longing, or conflict. Or both. It’s a kind of intimate experience through art, made possible by what I’d call emotional synchronicity.

That’s what happened to me with Sam’s Adar.

It was much like Rilke’s command -“You must change your life” - but not with a thunderclap. With Sam Hazeldine, it happens like a tide. Rising, ebbing, returning. Quiet, insistent.

Sam’s Adar, and the way he inhabits him, feels inseparable from who he is as a performer—and maybe even as a person. That fusion has been powerful. It opened a radical line of communication—with myself, as myself.

He’s become a kind of dark muse to me, too.

As far as there’s a mystical component to this, it’s not lofty or abstract. It’s visceral. It reaches me through a kind of face-to-faceness where experience and memory meet in a way that quietly undoes me:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now stays faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (1 Corinthians 13: 12-13)

Charity …

A few nights ago, I woke from a dream. Sam with longer hair, darker, his skin pale, dressed in black. Was it Adar? Or Sam in Adar’s shape? The dream blurred the line, blended the two.

He'd put his arms around me. Both of them.

Pulled me close. Kindly.

He didn't let go. Maybe he whispered something. I don’t remember words, just the warmth.

Apparently I needed it.

I did.

And for as long as it lasted, it was comforting.

Quiet, soothing comfort.

It was a feeling crossing the threshold—from whatever imagined realm it came from—into my breathing, waking reality. A meeting with Sam-as-Adar in that liminal space.

It wasn’t strange.

It felt natural.

It felt okay.

Looking at Sam’s face, there’s an echo of lived experience. A sense of being face to face with something emotionally synchronous—recognizing a common, not the same.

And sometimes, there’s a trace of too much in him: like someone who stayed up an hour too long, drank a little too deep, smoked the one cigarette he didn’t need, turned over a thought from angles no one else bothers with, cried through the witching hour, worked himself up and lost sleep over something he can’t change.

He looks like someone I want to hug. Then crack a joke - just to make the air lighter. Because that’s what he does so well.

He’s by no means just a sad potato. He’s sharp, funny, charming. That dry humor—marked by an almost boyish love of puns and a disarming wit—betrays a fundamental sympathy for people and the world around him.

You know that moment when the invisible tendrils of your nervous system find an emotional match—something synchronous, something they’d been reaching for without you even knowing?

It’s like a quiet earthquake, shifting continents inside you.

Somehow Adar or Sam-as-Adar unraveled feelings that were tugged away for too long.

An unsung grief. A subcutaneous storm of fear and fury.

The kind that bleeds you white until you start to look unfamiliar to yourself.

Then that face, those eyes, his voice—piercing through protective layers.

Igniting something dormant. The sleeping dragon. A balrog in the mines of Moria.

We're witnessing the fictional demise of a character. Watching the inevitable end, anxiously.

Now my smartwatch buzzes, alerting me that my resting heart rate has spiked—like my body thinks it’s an emergency.

Neurons in my gut short-circuit for weeks.

Synapses burn out until they misfire… or go numb.

And yet, it’s just a connection through a screen.

Through storytelling.

Fostered, maybe, by a kind of empathetic recognition—some deep understanding of what makes another soul tick.

Still, it leaves me strangely vulnerable. Shaken. In real life.

Even after the heart rate resettles and the neurons calm, something lingers.

As if there’s a synchronized longing—for more of everything.

To feel alive.

To be true to yourself.

To emotionally recognize yourself again.

But also: to be exhausted by that truth.

To be unable to carry it, to hold on.

To be, somehow, somatically at risk.

A hug and a silly joke go a long way then.

A tired man, his tired eyes - both fictional and not- feel so vividly alive they’ve diffused into my world, real and metaphysical.

And I look back at him through a dark mirror.

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He was not written as a Bufoon, abusive, dishonorable character. - so why are people feeling entitled to portray that? He rebuilt a new kingdom after the fall which from what I have gathered was caused by the arrogance of man (specifically Al-Pharazon and his followers) Elendil served as High King of Arnor and Gondor and he and his sons were instrumental in the resistance of Sauron.

I apologize ahead of time, this is a bit personal.

I'mstill writing this. I will not stop writing this. Someone has to write a story where Elendil is not a side character, a bad father who abuses his children, a buffoon sidekick to an Elf, or a plaything of a Queen, but what Tolkien wanted him to be. A father to a nation, to his family, to those he loved, cared about and saved. I refuse those who portray him as a bad father, an abusive one even, who laugh at his honesty, his openness, his kindness. I refuse to believe that there are people who call him abusive while they give Pharazôn a pass. I refuse to believe that good men have to be dragged down while villains are exalted and excused. I refuse to believe he needs to be sidelined and mocked because he is a man. And if some of you refuse to read further because of this, that is fine. I wish you well.

(Pic from cap-that-dot-com)

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Couldn’t have said it better 🩷

Perhaps an unpopular opinion…you are free to disagree. You are free to unfollow, even block. I am free to do the sam. Go with god, with Eru, whomever. 💅🏻💁🏼‍♀️

This is not a "bad father." He has raised three children alone for many years, all four of them struggling with grief, being members of an increasingly targeted minority, and rising instability in their homeland (in which they become ensnared).

Does he make mistakes, have shortcomings? Yeah. Because he's human (even if Númenorean, haha). He remains a fundamentally GOOD man with a lot to teach us all: about trust, about loyalty, about care, about service.

All of that said, to accuse him of abuse…as quite an understatement…quite misses the mark. Sad to see some people misconstrue a character like this, while valorizing villians.

A key thing Tolkien can teach us, I do believe: some virtues are timeless, and we eschew them to our absolute peril.

And fin. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. 💁🏼‍♀️💅🏻

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Happy Birthday to Dave Gahan 🖤

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And now one of the most underrated 80s post punk bands to exist.. The Sound - this should have been the official music video it fits so well.

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They were so in love 😍 😭

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Remembering Clem Burke 💔 https://youtu.be/O_WLw_0DFQQ?si=piy8wvJyXHEMiUCB

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Forgiveness, Pity and Redemption

On his Tolkien legendarium analysis of 2x08, Tolkien scholar Dr. Corey Olsen brought up another layer of meaning to Nenya, as representative of forgiveness, expressed in both Adar and Elrond scenes.

Adar forgives Galadriel for her killing of the Orcs, and establishes this symbolic connection with Nenya, as he returns it to her.

Elrond returning Nenya to Galadriel, also symbolizes him forgiving her because of the Three rings of power drama (having lied to him and to Celebrimbor, which caused the feud between them at the beginning of the season) and their friendship is finally “healed”.

Since in Tolkien legendarium, forgiveness is connected with the idea of “redemption”, and both the showrunners and Morfydd Clark had said Galadriel was on a “redemption journey” in Season 2, this is it (and not her resisting Sauron, again). She’s redeemed because she earns Adar and Elrond’s forgiveness in 2x08.

However, Dr. Olsen didn’t mention another character connected to Nenya in 2x08: Sauron.

He wanted Nenya, and, following this symbolism, Galadriel’s forgiveness (which he has been seeking since S1, when he says he’s sorry for her brother’s death). He’s the character who starts the season being told to “find forgiveness”, after all.

At the end, Galadriel refused to forgive Sauron (= handing over Nenya). Which is yet another denial of his redemption, which eventually will come to an end in Season 3 or 4 when his “fair motives” will die out and he’ll fully embrace his role of “Morgoth’s representative”, the new embodiment of evil.

So I maintain the opinion I shared on my post about Charlie and Morfydd interviews: I don’t know where her comment about Galadriel feeling pity for Sauron in S2 finale comes from because it’s not a theme in their scene, at all. Quite the opposite.

The only character who “pities” Sauron in the finale is Celebrimbor, actually. He not merely prophetizes how the rings of power will destroy him, but how he’s a prisoner to them, and his “Lord of the Rings” title is a testament to that, and how he self-deceives himself into believing he’s “doing good” with his rings of power masterplan.

But he won’t heal anything, and he’s planting the seeds of his own destruction. And Celebrimbor pities him, at the end. He calls him “Sauron”; the name Mairon has earned, while “Gandalf” is the name Olórin has earned, as well (Sauron and Gandalf have mirror journeys in RoP).

But Celebrimbor doesn’t say this to taunt Sauron, quite the opposite. This line is filled with pity. Which is a sentiment only Galadriel has given him in S1, but before knowing his real identity and believed him to be “just Halbrand”. When she found out the truth, there was no more pity nor “grief” for him.

But Mairon still refuses the name “Sauron”, as he tells Glûg “I have many names” when he asks him “are you him? Are you Sauron?” I already talked about this, but I get the feeling he’ll fully embrace the name “Sauron” to symbolize his full and irreversible fall back into evil, and Morgoth.

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Someone played around and transformed Matt Smith into Daniel Ash and I’m ok with it 😍😎 wish I could give them credit but there is no info on who made this.

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He was only in one episode but left a big impression 🔥

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Adar, Rings of Power, S2E8

When my time comes

Forget the wrong that I've done

Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed

And don't resent me

And when you're feeling empty

Keep me in your memory

Leave out all the rest

Leave out all the rest..

LP🖤

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lilith, i’m tryin’ (i felt your fingers slowly crawl up my spine)

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Absolutely stunning beautiful song. Before smoking trashed Mac’s voice.

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"Men would sooner put the realm to the torch than see a woman ascent the Iron Throne."

🥹my baby