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[the-infamous-eel]

[the-infamous-eel]

Muppet Max: Felt Road

From last year's Portland Adult Soapbox Derby

[the-infamous-eel]

One of the things that’s really struck me while rereading the Lord of the Rings–knowing much more about Tolkien than I did the last time I read it–is how individual a story it is.

We tend to think of it as a genre story now, I think–because it’s so good, and so unprecedented, that Tolkien accidentally inspired a whole new fantasy culture, which is kind of hilarious. Wanting to “write like Tolkien,” I think, is generally seen as “writing an Epic Fantasy Universe with invented races and geography and history and languages, world-saving quests and dragons and kings.” But… But…

Here’s the thing. I don’t think those elements are at all what make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so good. Because I’m realizing, as I did not realize when I was a kid, that Tolkien didn’t use those elements because they’re somehow inherently better than other things. He used them purely because they were what he liked and what he knew.

The Shire exists because he was an Englishman who partially grew up in, and loved, the British countryside, and Hobbits are born out of his very English, very traditionalist values. Tom Bombadil was one of his kids’ toys that he had already invented stories about and then incorporated into Middle-Earth. He wrote about elves and dwarves because he knew elves and dwarves from the old literature/mythology that he’d made his career. The Rohirrim are an expression of the ancient cultures he studied. There are a half-dozen invented languages in Middle-Earth because he was a linguist. The themes of war and loss and corruption were important to him, and were things he knew intimately, because of the point in history during which he lived; and all the morality of the stories, the grace and humility and hope-in-despair, was an expression of his Catholic faith. 

J. R. R. Tolkien created an incredible, beautiful, unparalleled world not specifically by writing about elves and dwarves and linguistics, but by embracing all of his strengths and loves and all the things he best understood, and writing about them with all of his skill and talent. The fact that those things happened to be elves and dwarves and linguistics is what makes Middle-Earth Middle-Earth; but it is not what makes Middle-Earth good.

What makes it good is that every element that went into it was an element J. R. R. Tolkien knew and loved and understood. He brought it out of his scholarship and hobbies and life experience and ideals, and he wrote the story no one else could have written… And did it so well that other people have been trying to write it ever since.

So… I think, if we really want to write like Tolkien (as I do), we shouldn’t specifically be trying to write like linguists, or historical experts, or veterans, or or or… We should try to write like people who’ve gathered all their favorite and most important things together, and are playing with the stuff those things are made of just for the joy of it. We need to write like ourselves.

[the-infamous-eel]

Hey, I heard this website likes that show, Supernatural. Who knew? (Please don't Lock me up) (runs and hides)

[the-infamous-eel]

Galactic map from Omega Protocol. This game started as a sci-fi 5e hack, then took a hiatus, returned as a PbtA game using Uncharted Worlds, and is now switching to the FATE system using some of the rules from the Bulldogs! game

[the-infamous-eel]

Heckler-416, a bounty hunter from my Omega Protocol game. He's named after the Hecker and Koch HK-416 and is a nod to my favorite assassin Droid, HK-47

[the-infamous-eel]

Like Bardcore is a thing and nobody was going to tell me about it?

[the-infamous-eel]

We keep finding space stations, and we don't know why yet.

Most are in orbit around planets, but plenty more are orbiting moons, stars, the odd black hole, or just floating in deep space.

Their age varies, some are so old that just getting close enough to dock makes them shatter like glass, others are so recently constructed that the lights are still on and the reactors are still fueled. All are empty of any life or robots smarter than a roomba.

The ones orbiting planets are orbiting dead worlds, or living worlds where nothing on them is smart enough to launch a space station.

The stations in deep space are weirder. The most information came from the one by Epsilon Eridani. A massive installation, it had docking rings for hundreds of vessels, all empty. It was in remarkable shape for how old it was (from the unrepaired micrometeorite impacts, we estimate it has been abandoned for about 3000 years), so we were able to access a lot of information from its main computer. We found the coordinates of several home planets, and visited them all. All were dead, empty, or in one case, simply missing. The star was still there, the other uninhabitable planets mentioned in the databanks were there, but their homeworld? Gone. No debris or expanding gas cloud, it's just missing.

And that's the thing: if we found space stations along with abandoned ruins of ground-based installations, that'd make sense. If we met dozens of living races, amongst a few empty satellites of long dead races, that'd also be expected. But this is all the evidence we're not alone in the universe we've found.

We've sent probes to over half the stars in this galaxy and visited hundreds in crewed spacecraft, but the empty space stations are the only evidence of alien life. Every planet is either a sterile husk, a gas giant, or a vibrant living world with nothing smarter than a giraffe living on it. Oh, there's strange life forms of every kind! But none of them seem sapient, certainly not sapient enough to build a space station.

Where is everyone? We've been asking that question since we first understood the Drake Equation and the Fermi paradox, but the question has taken on a new form as we've gone to the stars and found endless empty houses in the sky.

It's the difference between looking at an empty desert and walking through an abandoned city. In both cases, there's a silent emptiness, but in the latter case, it seems to contain a sinister element. This place is empty, but it shouldn't be. Something made it empty, and we haven't found out why yet.

We keep looking, and keep listening to the echoes of our own footsteps in the silent habitats.

[the-infamous-eel]

Haunted by a fantasy world where "adventurer" is handled in the same way as "assassin" in John Wick. An ifykyk secondary economy running on gold coins where everyone knows each other but no one acknowledges the elephant in the room because we have manners about our weird-ass line of deadly desperate dangerous work.

Rolling into town, looking immaculate. Checking into the Inn. Not an inn, or the coaching house, or the traveler's hostel. The Inn. The one that takes my ridiculous oversized coin and says that my room is ready, and will I need to visit the Smith today? Perhaps a meeting with the Vintner? Shall I send up the Gourmand?

"Good afternoon, Master Whicke," the Smith says, putting aside the barrel scraper he's been working on to flip a switch beside the forge. Racks of tenpenny nails and trowels and hammers fold back to reveal the glittering points and edges of a score of swords and axes and spearpoints lit with the flicker of finely-tuned enchantments. "Shall we tour what's new?"

"What sort of occasion are we hosting, Master Whicke?" The Vintner asks, pocketing the coin with a sigh. "A funeral," you say.

"Ah, well perhaps something light to start, then," she says selecting a straight-walled flask that glitters with contained starlight, proof against the touch of the undead. " And something for remembrance," she plucks a small crock of something evil-smelling and phosphorescent. "And then something to really bring down the house." She gingerly selects a double ampoule of energetic looking jellies.

The Gourmand carefully runs his knife through the salted flank of a cockatrice with a pursing of the lips. "So many neglect trail rations, Master Whicke, and it is their shame. Paired with goldenwheat pancakes and carrion honey, a mouthful of cockatrice--properly seasoned of course--will keep the mummy rot at bay, even post-exposure. I have been given to indicate by the Management that your current escapade may make such information useful to you. I will of course wrap your purchases exceedingly carefully. Rot will be your constant companion in the Black Pyramid."

There's something here.

[the-infamous-eel]

While Rogue is one of my all-time favorite words, I picked Scoundrel because of that exact scene in the reblog above.

Commentary more than welcome! Which word flatters you, which intrigues you or attracts you? (In the broad sense, though the narrow sense is very much viable.) Which repels you, and which, weirdly, does both? Terry Pratchett wrote that rogue is "a word with a twinkle in its eye", but there's no shortage of words like that. How do you like them?

[the-infamous-eel]

THINKING ABOUT DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS‼️

[the-infamous-eel]

I have a very similar bow. Now all I need is a horse and this'll be me. Can't be that hard, right?

[the-infamous-eel]

Oh shit! That's Portland!

📍 nw waterfront

[the-infamous-eel]

this blog has tooooo many paragraphs and long stories. More pictures for the stoners.

Suggested movies to watch high:

Run Lola Run (1998)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Manifesto (2015)

The Devil's Carnival (2012)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

La Planete Sauvage (1973)

Zardoz (1974)

Metropolis (2001)

Dark Star (1974)

Suggested activities when high:

listen to music with headphones

touch grass

enjoy a seascape

enjoy an urban landscape from above, a rooftop or a bridge

(DO NOT FALL. don't go alone, and don't fall. if you're too inexperienced and/or stupid, stay home and listen to music)

socialise

dance

fuck

Not suggested activities when high:

reading Hegel

doomscrolling

rotting on the couch and mindlessly watching tv

browsing a blog that since day 1 has been about, and I quote, "exploring the Rogue archetype in D&D, fiction, and real life", with all the paragraphs and long stories this entails

sending incredibly stupid asks to random people on tumblr

[the-infamous-eel]

Reblog to open a rail line from your blog to the person you reblogged this from

[the-infamous-eel]

Fair point. I realized after I hit post that you were talking about milk *fats* and not just milk

"Why do my mashed potatoes never taste like restaurant mashed potatoes" because restaurant mashed potatoes are, according to most published recipes, roughly 15% milk fat by volume. They're basically potato-flavoured whipped cream.

[the-infamous-eel]

*ONLY* 15%? 50/50 potato to cream and butter is the way to go

"Why do my mashed potatoes never taste like restaurant mashed potatoes" because restaurant mashed potatoes are, according to most published recipes, roughly 15% milk fat by volume. They're basically potato-flavoured whipped cream.