Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!

A man of his times, Tar-Minastir perpetuated Númenórean policies of the past and foreshadowed those that would follow. Read Tar-Minastir's biography here.

Please read and let me know how you like it. (It is a short one!) This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.

I slept incredibly late today. Was watching the Men's Free Program of the Four Continents Championship until after 2:00 a.m. Yuzuru won the Gold Medal that gave him a complete set of one Gold in every major international competition he has been eligible for from his junior years through now. No one else has ever done that. There is a weird feeling around this season for me. He never mentions the next Olympics or anything beyond this season. I seriously wonder if we will get a retirement announcement after Worlds. Most people would have already stopped if they had accomplished what he has. He does want that Quad Axel very badly. We shall see--he claims he will try for it at the Montreal World Championships in March.

When he retires, I will probably have to take a break for a while from watching figure skating. I've done it before. It is a very subjective sport--either one is completely swept away by a skater and they can do no wrong or they can hit Quad after Quad and leave one cold (Nathan Chen, for example, got off on the wrong foot with me for no fault of his own. He was overrated too soon--with shallow edges and stiff knees. And then the media hysteria around Chen before the Olympics was so uncalled for--disrespectful of the skaters who actually ended up on the podium and others!). Anyway, Yuzu is my man. He has been an intersection of everything that I love most in a skater: speed, grace, musicality, lightness, huge jumps--big, high, wide, fast, with landings like they were nothing. Sheer charisma and star quality! I know this bores most of you so I will stop soon.

Here is a less than stellar quality fan video of his post-competition Gala piece from last night. No! I changed my mind--not even I cannot stand listening to all the screams and sobbing fans on that one--like watching one of those early Beatles live concerts. I will give you the version of the same (Hope and Legacy) that won him Worlds in 2017. One of the best skates ever in the history of figure skating--your mileage may vary. It is a subjective sport (kind of like gymnastics or ballet!) Yuzuru is actually better himself now. He has not stopped growing artistically or as an athlete. Nathan Chen can score higher at times, but this program was the one that first made me think Yuzu is the greatest of all times.



The music Hope and Legacy is a compilation of pieces by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi. The magic of Studio Ghibli owes as much to Joe Hisaishi as it owes to director Hayao Miyazaki. Yuzu is most himself with Japanese themes and Chopin. That's who he is on the ice. He's done fabulous things with other music but these show his best side, his true self.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.

I am feeling a little better still every day. Working on the Luthien bio again. Since it is so cold, I decided I wanted the oven to be on for a while and to smell something baking. So I made this!



And we had a bowl of apples just slightly past their prime fresh eating state. So I baked an apple pie–I love the way it looks. I like a messy, rustic looking pie. I call it caramel apple pie. I had a recipe a year ago, but misplaced it and cannot remember where I got it. Dying to see how it worked–ran low on cinnamon, lost the original recipe, the apples were a little old! It turned out better than the one I made last Thanksgiving when I did everything right! Wow! Seat-of-the-pants is often better than slavishly following directions.

I hope Laura comes home soon! I want her inside and having a nice dinner before the temps drop even lower. Fat chance of that! Making salmon steaks, Brussel's sprouts, and shredded cheesy potato casserole. So happy to be well enough to make dinner again!!

Icon above -- Alex as a tiny sprout holding a live lobster (its claws were tied closed!) and that is a real fancy Chef's hat in the kitchen of a restaurant where his daddy was the Sous-Chef. Alex remembers helping that evening! OMG! I was terrified when I saw that photo the first time.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.

Hope you enjoy your birthday, ignoblebard! And I know it is your favorite celebration! Here is a video to give you the almost-as-good-as-being-there experience of a NYC Greenwich Village Halloween parade. (Sadly, it is supposed to be raining and storming like crazy at that time this year! There is always next year. NYC is weird--a few years ago we had a blizzard on Halloween and then another time there was Hurricane Sandy. Creepy weather around Halloween!!)

• Character of the Month Biography: Elladan and Elrohir, by Oshun. First part. Although not typically thought of as Silmarillion characters, Elladan and Elrohir's family tree is a veritable thicket of who's-who in the First Age. The first part of this two-part biography explores their family ties and the events in their lives up to the Ring War.
• Character of the Month Biography: Elladan and Elrohir, by Oshun. The second part of the two-part biography of Elladan and Elrohir considers their role in the Ring War and the broader thematic importance of their storyline to the legendarium.

He's lost!!

Anyway, I came across this guy again last night. Been looking for a credit for him for years. Everyone uses him and no one credits the author. Found someone who claimed to have encountered him on Deviantart, but I searched for hours and did not find him. Rumor has it that he might have been intended to be Gil-galad. I found someone else who claims he is Fingon. Others called him "unnamed Noldo." To me he looks at lot like all of the above and most recently seemed like a good representation of Elladan or Elrohir. Anyone know the artist? Google images led me to an ocean of uncredited copies of this picture.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.

The Council of Rivendell by MellorianJ (from Deviantart)

Elladan and Elrohir (Part 1), Asking you to read my latest Monthly Character Biography.

Although not typically thought of as Silmarillion characters, Elladan and Elrohir’s family tree is a veritable thicket of who’s-who in the First Age. The first part of this two-part biography explores their family ties and the events in their lives up to the Ring War.

Read the biography of Elladan and Elrohir. (Next month is the LotR business (the good stuff!) and you ought to read this one before it.)

It really took me back in time to work on them. Reminds me of my first couple of years in the Tolkien fandom when they were among by most favorite characters and there was so much fanfic about them! There probably still is, but not by my closest friends in the fandom. Anyway, yes, a lot of fabulous memories for me.

I even turned Elladan into a quasi-protagonist in my Eomer/Lothíriel novel The Princess and the Horse Lord. That annoyed the hell out of the trolls on ff.net. (Really do have to finish that novel--actually cracked it open and edited a little a couple of months ago.) Not to mention that it felt like half of the Slashy Santa stories had them as featured characters if not protagonists.

Remind me of your favorite stories featuring them and the whole Rivendell crew.  This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.

I keep trying to post here, but I have too much to cover and it has been daunting to start! First some random pictures of the day I met drummerwench at the Morgan Library. Photos were banned within the exhibit, but not the entire museum.

Getting there (and getting home) car, bus, subway/car, subway, bus. It was a trek from deep in the heart of Brooklyn and the subway stairs nearly killed me. Why can't we have escalators and lifts everywhere like the London Underground? NYC can be such a dump sometimes. Truly is the belly of the beast. I did try to find stations with elevators to help a little--too little. (I got blisters on my feet from the stairs--not to mention what it did to my worst knee. Anyway, nevermind. All my fault--the condition comes from a long life of self-abuse--from cheerleading, to mountain climbing, to tromping around the world in bad shoes. We won't even mention the weight question.)

The requisite picture out of a cab window in downtown Manhattan (somewhere in Soho, I think)--on my way to a subway stop to go back home.




Various pictures in and around the museum below. Only the library picture is not mine. And, no I did not get a photo of that outstanding example of a Gutenberg Bible (best I had ever seen). Wow! I did get to see--from a distance, with my bad eyes, a handwritten 900-page tiny copy of one of George Sands' novels (forget which one). Amazing original scores of great music--not pictured. DrummerWench and I fell in love with, among other things, cuneiform script on clay tablets. A lot of terrific tiny Babylonia and Assyrian ancient seals. Those followed nicely and serendipitously immediately after going over all of Tolkien scripts in his different languages.

(I'd recommend taking the time to go through other parts of the library/museum. We were time-limited and I was crippled--so sorry about that, DrummerWench! Sob! I felt like we did make good use of our time despite my limping.)





These next two are of the entrance into the building which is through the new section.





Below is part of the original section (the old Morgan's personal library) and some of the exhibits there. (The Tolkien exhibit is on the second floor in the new section.)


Not mine, obviously--too well set up and no people!! His Study next to it is really interesting also. The Library is quite big, which does not show in this photo, but you get a sense of the color and opulence.

That tapestry behind the fireplace is called The Triumph of Avarice. So overwhelmingly appropriate--lest we should forget this is the palace and private museum of the Morgans, pre-eminent among the robber barons and capitalists of America's Gilded Age (inadvertent? or conscious choice of the tapestry?). The entire thing is a temple to greed! Imagine this was private? Not made public until after the death of the man who built it. It's been open to the public since then.

I told DrummerWench that the place both horrifies and fascinates me. You gotta see it to believe it. It's like they went around the Old World with a shopping cart filling it up with whatever appealed (of course, they had quite knowledgeable "personal shoppers' to help them.

The hallways and entrance to the original wing are reminiscent of a cathedral--a gaudy one. The place is a mixture of commissioned decorative artwork and priceless world treasures, an example of the over-the-top architecture of the ascendancy of American Capitalism--rightly called the Gilded Age. Over-the-top Fantastic as it is, it is one of my least favorite NYC Museums--I guess it triggers my moral outrage. I'll go back though, as soon as my knee and feet are a little better!!

THE TOLKIEN EXHIBIT ITSELF

Exquisite! I came away thinking he is a much better artist than I had realized from viewing only online pics and poor reprints in books. (Speaking of that, the companion book to the exhibit published by the Morgan is amazing--the most wonderful reproductions of so much of the art and calligraphy and family photos presented throughout the galleries. Really worth the price.)

Bring your magnifying glass. Almost all of it is tiny. Although there are some wall-sized reproductions which are gorgeous--notably Smaug and his treasure! I used my reading glasses with their huge magnification to hold up in front of a lot of the smallest pieces or larger items (maps and tables) made up of tiny components. Fortunately, I did not suffer from being unable to read a lot of the excellent descriptions since I already knew what they said--I could skim and get by. Although, finally, my eyes did ache and I almost felt dizzy. (I do have serious vision issues.) 

His art is amazing, the colors are vivid (after all of these years!), his calligraphy is stunning beyond what I expected and I had high expectations, his handwriting tiny, and the details mind-bogglingly meticulous. Both of us learned a lot and our prior knowledge of what we were looking at was not too shabby, to say the least!

I loved the family photos and there were a number I do not recall seeing anywhere before. Seeing all the pieces together and arranged so well was truly a memorable experience--once in a lifetime--I do not exaggerate. I could have spent much longer going over and over it (if my feet did not hurt and DrummerWench did not have a plane to catch). On a weekday, it was busy, but not unbearably crowded. They do limit how many people who are allowed into the exhibit at any one time. We did not have wait though and I felt no pressure to move on as one often does in special exhibitions.

I learned that Rumil's script is usually written vertically in columns from top to bottom. Did you know that Elves are ambidextrous? I didn't but I am not surprised.  

I cannot recommend this exhibition highly enough. I will definitely try to go back again before it closes--maybe take Laura and Alex.


Thank you so much again, DrummerWench, for inviting me to meet you there. You were a wonderful companion.

If any of you plan to be there, check with me and I may try to meet you.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.

Card 38. - Comment on a fanwork -- Day 1 prompt G48: "a fic you reread."
Card 163. The Russingon Card -- Day 1 prompt G48: "blood"

Date: March 01, 2019 - 07:27 am

Title: Comment on *Hatred by Dawn Felagund 

 

I am quite sure that I have commented on this story at some point, but it does not show up on the SWG posting. I have been raving about this particular creation of yours for over a decade!

Whenever I come back to re-read it I am always shocked at how short it is--The Little Engine that Could!--the small story that packs a hefty punch. 

You warn all over the place (gah! fandom! one had to choose between warnings and spoilers at the point in fandom history when this was first posted!). It arguably would be more powerful without the warning, but I also do understand individual emotional fragility better today than I did ten years or more ago. 

You tell us that it is a story of "Of hatred and passion between two cousins," and "not for the faint of heart."

Most of us have experienced a lot of pent-up stress or anger after a breakup--the more significant the relationship the harder the breakup is to handle. In some ways, the more one has loved a partner, and the more intense the relationship, the harder and less elegant and/or mature one is likely to behave during its ending. I think I responded so strongly to this ficlet because I had initially fallen so head over heels with Fingon/Maedhros when I first encountered them in The Silmarillion. (And have had my share of bad endings of epic life partnerships! Not once, but twice!)

Be still my beating heart…

"in the bliss of Valinor, before Melkor was unchained, or lies came between them, Fingon had been close in friendship with Maedhros; and though he knew not yet that Maedhros had not forgotten him at the burning of the ships, the thought of their ancient friendship stung his heart."

SPOILERS BELOW:

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So how does charming, beautiful, kind and brave Fingon respond to dealing with his resentment of encountering his ex- at a party? He punches him in the face! I love this still as much as the first time I read it! I cannot believe he did that! The scene is so perfect! Ai, Fingon! Not your finest hour and that is what makes the story so perfect!

This fits two of today's B2MeM earth challenges perfectly! 

Card 38. - Comment on a fanwork -- Day 1 prompt G48: "a fic you reread."

Card 163. The Russingon Card -- Day 1 prompt G48: "blood"

This little ficlet is right up there with my best-loved epic Silmarillion novels in terms of lasting impact. (I also wrote one of my own favorite stories, "I Hate You," inspired by this one.) This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.