Rynling R&D

The essay I linked to isn't really about this, but I want to reflect on the passage I quoted. The sentiment (as expressed by another person on Tumblr) that "I would rather be friends with someone who has good intentions than a mean person who says the right things" as been thrown at me several times before, and I don't think the author of either post is trying to say that normal and reasonable people shouldn't be allowed to speak out against injustice because it's "mean."

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But let's be real, you shouldn't have to choose. Your relationship with any given friend or colleague should not be about how much harassment or bigotry you're willing to put up with. If it sucks, hit da bricks!!

Wait wait our idea of dirty medieval peasants is based on a *tax aversion scam*??? Please tell me more I need to know this.
https://brunhiddensmusings.tumblr.com/post/170638767425/wait-wait-our-idea-of-dirty-medieval-peasants-is

of course word of these envoys traveled faster then they did, virtually every town they came to had time to claim they had far less taxable wealth then they actually did have by the time the audit arrived. in one of the more over the top cases an entire village pretended to have caught insanity- when the taxmen arrived they saw screaming laughing idiots with underwear on their heads so they left as fast as they could considering at the time insanity was thought to be literally contagious. it would be over five years before anyone tried to audit that town again.

Sounds legit. I think there's also a history writer bias of wanting to make everyone outside the ruling elite seem uncivilized, when really most people in most places in most periods of history are just going to be living their lives in a completely normal way.

One of my favorite microgenres of fantasy is small stories about the quiet everyday lives of normal people - tertiary characters at best - who exist in the same world as epic events. One of my favorite examples of this is the first collected volume of Gotham Central, which is an episodic police procedural. The quality of the series drops after the first volume, and I tend not to be sympathetic toward the police, but I love the idea of normal people doing normal everyday jobs and suddenly there's Batman.

Night vision is a growing worry among motorists.
https://seatsafetyswitch.com/post/690853724077342720/night-vision-is-a-growing-worry-among-motorists

This is a perfect five-paragraph story.

Well, "story." I choose to believe it's 100% true.

You CAN do pushups, my friend!
https://hybridcalisthenics.tumblr.com/post/629430309753110528/you-can-do-pushups-my-friend

Thank you, Tumblr, for this treasure.

I really like this guy. I like his face, and I like his voice, and I like his lovely green backyard.

I also like that he looks and dresses like a real person, and that a lot of his stretches and exercises are things you can do with just an empty wall in your house. I appreciate that he shows you "easier" variations of what he's doing, because I definitely need those variations!

Last night, after discovering this particular video, I did some wall pushups, and it felt amazing. I love jogging but have no upper body strength, so this is the first set of pushups I've ever been able to do. In my life. Awesome.

I absolutely love how healthy and *real* the friendship between Geralt and Jaskier feels in the Hexer
https://ruusverd-fandom-blog.tumblr.com/post/618674826549379072/i-think-my-favorite-thing-about-the-hexerthe

Geralt and Jaskier in the Hexer feel like two people who are genuinely best friends. They’re clearly ecstatic to see each other whenever they meet, big smiles, big hugs, but they’re not excessively anxious or mopey when they part ways, just somewhat sad. They’re each functional as individuals, their lives don’t revolve exclusively around each other.

Jaskier doesn’t see Geralt as a legendary hero for him to exploit for inspiration, neither does he treat Geralt like a bumbling idiot who needs Jaskier to manage his life for him. He sees Geralt as a truely good man who has been forced into a difficult, violent life against his will and above all just wants to be normal. Similarly, Geralt openly enjoys and admires Jaskier’s music and poetry and says Jaskier is “wise,” but he neither structures all his actions around Jaskier’s approval nor treats him like a unwanted burden.

While rewriting The Demon King, I realized that the friendship between Ananth and Marlowe needs to be strong from the beginning. It will become more real the more they interact with one another, but it needs to be clear from the onset that they actually like each other.

I haven't read the Witcher novels. I hear they're good, though.

lord of the rings is wholeheartedly earnest in its dedication to portraying hope and love and faith and loyalty and courage, and that is what makes it feel like home to so many of us. it’s true to itself. it doesn’t pretend to be cool and care less. it cares, a lot, and that is a rare, beautiful thing.

https://southfarthing.tumblr.com/post/671057084479143936/caffeineheroes-tolkien-knew-we-wouldve-all

This is another wholesome Tolkien post. I don't think sincerity is actually all that rare (Stephen King, for example, is full-on tits-out sincere on every page), but I understand the appeal and transformative potential of happy endings.

In my last post, I mentioned being twenty years old and dating another twenty-year-old who was physically and verbally abusive. That relationship was complicated, and we were both kids. I hope that, as an adult, he's happy and healthy and living his best life. Still, he used to love Lord of the Rings, and the message he took away from it is that things that didn't fit into his worldview were "evil" and thus undeserving of understanding or compassion. I don't think that message is necessarily in the books, in which "difference" is treated with much more nuance, but it's definitely in the Peter Jackson movies.

The Demon King is not sincere, mainly because all of the characters are grown adults who somehow have to live with themselves and the shitty decisions they've made. Still, I want the ending to be happy, and I want it to be happy for everyone. There is no "you've done this one bad thing, and now you're evil and inhuman forever." I want people do the right thing when it's important, and for love to win in the end. After all, what good is time travel if you can't exploit it to get the best ending?

Do you ever lie awake wondering how the heck Gimli knows what a nervous system is
https://sergle.tumblr.com/post/672967552248561664/do-you-ever-lie-awake-wondering-how-the-heck-gimli

This is my favorite thread on Lord of the Rings.

I'm in the process of trying to reconnect with these books after half a decade of garbage internet discourse, and it's good to remember that they're filled with silly stupid shit. A lot of the epic parts aren't even that well written, and there's no need to take everything so seriously.

The scene that's always resonated with me is when Galadriel gives Sam a tiny box with forest soil and a mallorn seed before he leaves Lothlorien, which is the opposite of epic.

If you haven't read these books since you were a kid, here's a refresher: Frodo and company have just escaped from the Mines of Moria, where Gandalf fell into a chasm to save everyone from a fire demon. On the other side of the mountain, the company tries to flee the orcs that are pursuing them by going into a creepy elf forest called Lothlorien, which is filled with giant mallorn trees. The elves drive away the orcs and capture the company, whom they take to Galadriel, their queen. Galadriel is one of the most ancient elves still in Middle Earth, and Frodo offers to give the ring to her, suggesting that she could use its power to defeat Sauron. She refuses, choosing to fade away instead of becoming a new tyrant.

Galadriel understands that the world will be different after she and Sauron are gone, so she gives Sam some forest soil and a mallorn seed to take back home with him to the Shire. The soil is meant to help repair the damage caused during the conflict (presumably by introducing healthy fungal cultures), thus ensuring that the Shrine will remain safe even when the elves and their forests are gone. The mallorn seed is a promise that at least one of the Lothlorien trees will remain in the world, just as the elves who lived there will remain in Sam's memory.

And every time one of my houseplants dies, I think, Damn I wish I had some of that elf dirt.

It turns out that Joseph, the wholesome and secretly gay Christian Youth Minister dad, is not the leader of a cult, nor does he murder your player-character. This is what happens:

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It’s an excellent horror story. I’ll be honest and admit that the dating sim elements of this game didn’t resonate with me, but the secret ending makes the entire endeavor worthwhile.

I remember that the Game Grumps team had to deal with a strong fandom backlash after people went through the Dream Daddy game files on Steam and found this ending when the game was released in 2017. Purity discourse on Tumblr was starting to get heated, and this was right around the time when Undertale fans were getting death threats because the game has jump scares that aren’t properly warned for (it has no such thing, by the way). Arin Hanson eventually had to get on Twitter to apologize for leaving the secret ending in the Dream Daddy files as an Easter egg, and his statement is reproduced in the Switch version of the game.

I also remember that there were a few student artists who were bullied off of social media for creating fan art of gender-swapped Dream Daddy characters. These artists were young queer women who enjoyed the game but were more into girls, and they were accused of being homophobic, transphobic, catering to a straight male gaze, etc etc etc. After being contacted by the parents of a teenage artist who attempted to commit suicide, Arin Hanson had to get on Twitter again to ask fans of Dream Daddy to stop stalking and harassing each other. People make jokes about how “Tumblr is a hellsite to you, but I’m just reblogging my pictures,” but let me tell you. Tumblr was a giant looneybin back in 2017.

What to Do If You Have Writer's Block
https://dduane.tumblr.com/post/633616801739276289/what-to-do-if-you-have-writers-block

To summarize, what Duane is suggesting is that, if you're having trouble, you should:

(a) Focus on one piece,
(b) Read it from the beginning,
(c) Take a few days to think about where it needs to go,
(d) Get rid of stuff it doesn't need, and then
(e) Write the character who speaks to you most directly.

I'm not sure if the particulars of this advice work for me, but it's interesting to consider. After all, it's always nice when a story falls into your hands fully formed, but it's been my experience that working on longer pieces involves sustained periods of waiting, reflection, and problem solving.

How I Paint Ghibli Looking Clouds
https://marusagorjup.tumblr.com/post/665009071775219712/i-decided-to-make-a-quick-tutorial-on-how-i-paint

How I Paint Ghibli Looking Landscapes
https://marusagorjup.tumblr.com/post/666007029666725889/if-there-are-any-spelling-mistakes-no-there

This is going to be my weekend project. I'll add links to the recommended brush sets to this post once I begin working.