Was reading up on Maiar recently, brushing up on my lore, and there was a mention of the fact that a lot of them just don’t bother to take physical form. Even the elves in Valinor aren’t sure how many of them there are. They’re just like, weird invisible ghost friends, creeping around Middle-Earth, observing things and giving people weird dreams. Having a good time in general.
This leads to the obvious question- did Morgoth have any followers who just couldn’t be bothered with physicality? His whole evil power shtick doesn’t seem like it would attract that sort of personality, his ethos is built on interfering with things, but there had to be at least a few who hung around him just to watch the fireworks. (Sauron: Come on, guys, you’re being a real drag. At least make the effort to do a wraith form.)
Does this mean that the War of Wrath had a post-mop up ghostbusting component? Some poor Edain watching Eönwë
shout at the empty halls of a liberated Angband about “going home and facing consequences” and “I mean it this time, don’t make me come get you.”
One corner of Lórien is mildly haunted for a few millennia by some Ainur who are under house arrest for Enabling This Nonsense.
It’s the first draft. Use the word “suddenly.” Put as many dialogue tags and adverbs as you want. Say “he saw” “she remembered” “she felt” “they wondered” as many times as you need to. Put the em dash there, put in too many commas, use semi-colons with reckless abandon. Type in [whatever] instead of thinking up a title for something. Just write it. If you worry too much about the particulars, about all the advice posts you’ve seen saying whatever you’re doing is wrong or not good enough, you won’t get anything done. It will slow you down as you go back and try to reword what you just wrote to make it better, proper. The first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done. And when you get to the end, you’ll find that all those “mistakes” are just clues for your future self to put together to make it all better.
Putting in adverbs and certain dialogue tags are a note for you as to who is saying something and how they’re saying it. When you’re editing, you can make sure it shows through the story instead. The word “suddenly” is a reminder to make things more abrupt. The first draft is just you mapping out where you want to go and how you want to get there. Don’t waste time trying to get it 100% right now, because then it will never get done. Don’t think too much– just write. Save the thinking for editing later.
The first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done
Feanor will not admit this to anyone, least of all himself, but he actually liked Indis back when they first met and she was just his father’s nice friend who took him for walks and answered all of his questions about the different plants in the garden. Afterward he recontextualized her kindness as nothing more than an attempt to get closer to his father (which in a sense it was, of course, but not in the manipulative way he makes it out to be.)
Hey all you Humans are Weird writers- why haven’t any of you written about how an entire generation is still defensive over Pluto’s loss of planetary status because we all collectively packbonded with a planet.
PLUTO IS A PLANET DO NOT FUCK WITH ME.
“Human Steven.” Shrax timidly approached, mandibles nervously caressing one another.
“Yeah Shrax?” Steven looked over from his station.
“I was wondering about your home star. Records seem… inconsistent in how many planets orbit Solaris.”
“Oh, yeah, it was debated a bit back in the day, but it’s eight.”
“Fuck you Steve! There’s nine!” Frank yells from across the room.
“Pluto’s only made two and a half revolutions Frank! It’s to small and barely caught in Solaris’ gravity! It’s not a planet!”
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