Lliira

My Silmarillion fic

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 22:46:51 GMT

So... hi! I got distracted. I want to try to be on here more again though.

Pursuant to that, here's a link to my Silmarillion fic: https://archiveofourown.org/series/3191496.

It absolutely, completely, and utterly destroys the so-called "canon" that is really Christopher Tolkien/Guy Gavriel Kay fanfic of J.R.R. Tolkien's contradictory notes. It's going to be SUPER long because I'm kind of obsessed. And consist of multiple novella-length works, and maybe some novel-length. You don't need to be terribly familiar with The Silmarillion to get it.

comments

Hi. And Bye.

Wed, 16 Jan 2019 06:14:56 GMT

My brain works correctly, which it didn't for years.

I am completely anti-censorship and anti-war. No matter the identity of the people on either side.

I will never support anyone who's best buds with Henry Kissinger. I will never support anyone who huggles up on George W. Bush. I am deeply ashamed of having supported someone who did countless drone strikes, fracking, and MOTHERFUCKING BOMBED FLINT. My one excuse is that I was drugged to the gills and/or trying to overcome being drugged to the gills.

I'm still mad as hell, and I guess always will be, because free speech and anti-war stances are always wildly unpopular.

It did turn my whole world around. And I do kinda like it. It's always better to know the truth.

comments

People need to stop worshiping intelligence agencies holy shit

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 18:59:12 GMT

The last time people believed what the intelligence community said, they lied us into an illegal war which killed millions of Iraqis and set the stage for Daesch and the current state of the Middle East in general. We -- meaning Obama and Hillary Clinton -- utterly destroyed Libya.

Trump is now bombing 8 countries, including helping Saudi Arabia and the UAE commit genocide in Yemen. And the media and corporate Democrats are angry that this unhinged toddler isn't more belligerent toward a nuclear power, after he already pulled out of the Iran deal, built up NATO, increased sanctions on Russia, and bombed and occupied part of Syria. His first bombing killed an 8-year old American girl -- remember that? He truly became president that day.

( Read more... )

comments

Just fuck everything

Sun, 22 Jul 2018 17:52:13 GMT

I have the following (among others) in my family: Jewish people, Chinese people, African people, and Russian people.

I'm used to right-wingers hating my family members (and me, since I'm disabled and poor and a woman.) But now we're getting it from the "center" too. I am so fucking sick of neolibs screeching about "the Russians zomg1112!!@@!" The shitheads called my cousin's Russian-American (and Jewish btw) kids "Russian anchor babies." Fuck. Off.

Hammers and sickles in anti-Russian propaganda? SERIOUSLY? Russia hasn't been communist for how long now? Longer than when the Clintons directly and proudly interfered in the Russian election to get the drunken buffoon Yeltsin elected, which btw led pretty directly to Russians looking desperately for a tyrannical strongman, i.e. Putin.

I'm an honest to no-god leftist and starting to wonder if this is how my grandfather felt just before he was blacklisted.

Flint still doesn't have clean water.

comments

Not All Politics Is Identity Politics

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 04:28:22 GMT

Article by Kenan Malik.

"It is not, then, that all politics is identity politics. It is that it has come to seem as if all politics can only be identity politics because the alternative, which formed the heart of the great, progressive social transformations over the past 200 years, has so badly eroded. As the universalist viewpoint has faded, largely as many of the social movements that embodied that viewpoint have disintegrated, so the social space vacated by that disintegration became filled by identity politics."

comments

Thu, 21 Jun 2018 19:57:42 GMT

People calling Republican assholes "Nazis" has been bugging me. Not because I think it's politically inexpedient, though I do. Not because I care about Trump supporters' feelings, because I don't. (Though I wish people would stop pretending they're working class. Trump won far more votes among the upper class than the working class. The typical MAGA type lives in a 4-bedroom on a cul-de-sac, not in a trailer.)

No, it bugs me for the usual reason: Someone is Wrong on the internet. Nazis were, and are, a specific phenomenon. They're fueled by anger and hate. Further, if you don't have a burning hatred and conspiratorial resentment toward Jews, "Nazi" truly doesn't fit. Republicans, however, are fueled by arrogant indifference with a spice of wounded superiority complex. It's a different thing. It's not a new thing, but it's not Nazism. So I lay there thinking of what it was like, and it didn't take long to remember a historical parallel:

The prosperous English during the Irish so-called "Potato Famine." I say so-called because it wasn't the fault of natural forces -- it was because of policies purposefully put in place by the English government in order to harm and kill the Irish. The wealthy and most of the middle class among the English saw the Irish exactly the same way the MAGA crowd sees most immigrants: As criminal "pests".

A Modest Proposal is as spot-on a satire today as it was then.

comments

Tue, 19 Jun 2018 05:07:22 GMT

I almost spat out my drink when I saw that McCain claimed family separation is "contrary to the principles our country was founded on."

I mean. I guess, yeah, contrary to the principles. But remember slavery? Um yeah family separation was kinda central to that. I dunno. I'm just tired of living in the United States of Amnesia. The same so-called liberals who were lately giving Dubya a tonguebath (one of the most sickening things I've seen in my life, up there with his presidency) are freaking out over how terrible ICE is. He started it. Obama continued it. I'm glad people are waking up a tad, but if they think this is only a Trump problem, they'll go right back to somnolence once Trump's gone, and things will keep getting worse.

comments

Sun, 10 Jun 2018 09:11:36 GMT

So like...

For years and years: "I just find narcissism super fascinating. That's why I near-obsessively like to learn about it. While I like learning about all psychological things, it is narcissism and watching narcissistic people that I can't stop rubbernecking. Because. I just find it fascinating. It's not going to even occur to me to look under the surface of this to ask the simplest of questions about why. It's just really fascinating to me, okay?"

Two days ago, I realized my father's a narcissist.

I'd forgotten so much about how he treated me. The memories weren't exactly repressed; they were simply not something that ever came to my mind. Abuse amnesia is real. And it all got confused in his alcoholism. If he'd only stop drinking everything would be better, I thought my whole life. Except no -- when he's not drinking, he's significantly nastier (to me, formerly to his wives, and to his brother) than when he's drunk. He is, of course, an angel to his friends at all times.

It took years for me to get un-used to his emotional abuse. But I've lived in a much more normal norm for years now. I actually forgot the old "normal." So when my father started up again, I went "wtf is this shit OH RIGHT."

My husband's shielding me a lot now, and my father seems to see my husband as above him on the ladder and therefore often sucks up to him in strange ways. One thing he loves to try to do is commiserate with my husband about how terrible I supposedly am, which doesn't work at all because my husband doesn't even try to argue, he simply says "she's awesome" or something similar in response.

My father treats me like he ever did, of course, and boy have I learned why I can't take a compliment. He implants a sting in every one of them, so what sounds like praise at first or to outsiders is actually as nasty an insult as can be imagined. My husband picked up on that super quickly. I think he's angrier with my father than I am.

I'm currently mostly stunned. So much that was incomprehensible in my life makes perfect sense now. Though I still don't know why it didn't occur to me to wonder why I was obsessed with learning about narcissism before now. Glad I did though.

comments

My god I love this song

Sun, 13 May 2018 01:12:46 GMT

comments

Thu, 10 May 2018 18:22:15 GMT

I realize Harry Potter references are way overdone.

But Gina Haspel wearing floaty flower print dresses is the most Umbridge thing I have ever seen.

comments

Thu, 10 May 2018 08:10:26 GMT

This is a good Psychology Today article about "the authoritarian personality," which I would like to see studied more.

My own family's not authoritarian (there were and are plenty of other issues), and I've never had real-life friends who are either. I have been personally subjected to authoritarians repeatedly online, however, where they seem to rule nearly everywhere. Winterfox/RequiresHate/B.S. infesting the vast majority of my fandoms is the prime example, but now her kind of thinking and language has spread far beyond fandom.

Also, while I was on opiates and recovering from them, my brain wasn't working too well. Now that I'm finally and entirely free (I think), I look at some of the people I followed and admired while I was on them and am appalled. I do believe that some of those people have changed since I liked them, but that may be because of a need to salve my pride.

I'm feeling pretty pessimistic about people raised as authoritarians being able to overcome that way of thinking. It can happen, but it seems like the odds are around one in twenty at best. They replace the trappings of their beliefs for new ones all the time, but they very rarely actually change. The need for strict hierarchy, for absolute truth, and above all for hatred to guide them, almost always stays in their cores.

I guess it's like anything else -- you have to admit you need to change before you've got a chance at it. And authoritarians protect themselves from that admission harder than anyone else.

comments

Sun, 06 May 2018 20:49:32 GMT

I've been catching up with Jason Colavito's blog, and he has a post about Steven Pinker that makes me happy.

"Since Pinker’s failings in historiography, scholarship, and reasoning have been amply demonstrated, I will use my space instead to talk about how Enlightenment Now is a secular humanist polemic masquerading as a work of objective science"

Yes. I, like Jason, like secular humanism, but that makes this recent surge of treating secular humanism as some kind of Objective Truth even more galling. It's a religious way of thinking, not a rational one.

Also I'm pretty sure I learned more about the Enlightenment in high school than Pinker has in his whole life, but that's not a real surprise. Evolutionary psychologists are notoriously allergic to history. Looks like Pinker's not up on biology and evolutionary theory, either, since he "singles out anyone who sacrifices himself for the greater good of the collective as a fool."

I wonder where willful ignorance ends and scamming begins. I think Pinker, Dawkins, and Shermer are more on the "willful ignorance" end of things, whereas I'm pretty sure Harris is more of a scammer. Maybe it doesn't matter. What does is that this is why we need to teach history more often and more honestly in schools as a bulwark against this kind of crap.

comments

James Madison told ya so

Fri, 04 May 2018 18:29:58 GMT

When state and church blend, people become less likely to be religious. https://psmag.com/news/is-the-christian-right-driving-americans-away-from-religion

James Madison: "I cannot speak particularly of any of the cases excepting that of Virginia, where it is impossible to deny that religion prevails with more zeal and a more exemplary priesthood than it ever did when established and patronized by public authority. We are teaching the world the great truth, that Governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson: the Religion flourishes in greater purity without, than with the aid of Government."

Unlike Madison, I'm totally cool with more people losing their religion. The main problems are that people raised in these far-right fundie religions are 1) less likely to lose their religion than those raised in more moderate traditions and 2) when they do, they're likely to keep the authoritarian mindset they were raised with and apply it to things other than religion.

Mostly, however, non-religious people are far too quiet about it. When you grow up in an area with even a few loud right-wing religious people, it gets difficult to say "I don't believe that" and "here's why you're wrong." A mere handful of fundies can thus control the whole culture. However! One person who does stand up to it is usually followed pretty quickly by a lot of others supporting them. It's just tough to be that first person.

comments

"Russian persons"

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 16:42:45 GMT

The Senate Intelligence Committee demanded records of any Green Party communications with "Russian persons."

I've had a lot of communications with "Russian persons." I wished my Russian cousin-by-marriage a happy birthday a little while ago on Facebook, for instance. Then there are the Russian cat posts I've thrown likes at. And the Russian persons who play Sims 2 whom I follow on Tumblr.

I'm joking, but this is something we should actually be screaming on the streets about. Before it's too late. We're looking at full-on McCarthy mode at this point, if not worse. And there are no Edward R. Murrows trying to stop it this time -- instead, the so-called liberal media is all in for xenophobia.

comments

The way people talk about Dragon Age 2 causes me pain

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 17:40:45 GMT

I was going to post the following on Tumblr because more people would see it. Then I realized shit, I can't post it on Tumblr, more people will see it, and I don't want to find myself neck-deep in the poisonous swamp that is the Bioware "community" again. I posted just the first little bit because I felt the need to say something, but I wrote this whole long thing and I'm not letting it go:

Hey online people? The religions in fantasy media aren’t your religion.

I’ve seen this over and over and OVER again, where certain people side with whatever religion a game or novel has because for some reason they conflate it with their religion. But it’s come to a head in recent years and I’m not going to roll my eyes and ignore it (or rather subject only my husband to my thoughts on it) any longer.

Following: rant about Dragon Age 2. Dragon Age 2 is a mess, but if you start with the premise that The Chantry = any major contemporary Earth religion, you’re fundamentally wrong about why. Brought to you by randomly seeing yet another person conflate the Chantry, which profits from enslaving mages and has an army, with their nicest ideas about modern Christian churches. The Chantry’s closer to the Catholic Church of 1500ish, but they’re still not the same.

( Flames on the side of my face )

comments

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 17:46:25 GMT

I'm one of those "we need to have actual discussions with people who disagree with us about things, so long as they're civil and not super extremist, and even when they're super extremist there are people who are capable of saving them so support that" people.

But Jordan Peterson fans? I can't. It's not that his opinions are bad, illogical, and willfully ignorant, though of course they are. It's that Peterson himself is both so phenomenally stupid and unbearably boring that I just... can't. I can't even say well, they're falling for charisma, because he's got less charisma than a typical mold spore. He claims that metaphor is reality and then rails against his misconception of... everything, because he's wrong about everything except "clean your room." He probably makes that into a weird attempted metaphor in a way that ends up making it wrong too.

( Read more... )

comments

I am not one bit sad that Barbara Bush is dead

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 15:43:30 GMT

I don't think saying "why should I waste my beautiful mind" on thinking about the war her son started was civil discourse.

Reminder that they've always been this way, just with less Twitter. Hugging up on George W. Bush like Ellen literally did is despicable, and it's despicable to do metaphorically as well. Unlike Nancy Pelosi, I do not "miss" Dubya. I bet Iraq doesn't either. As for bombing Syria, it's terrible, Obama did it too, and Hillary Clinton not only pushed for bombing, but wanted a no-fly zone over the country which would mean we'd be shooting down Russian planes and vice versa. Oh and then there's Libya and Yemen. Conversely, there are all the places in which leaders can commit crimes against humanity with impunity because they don't have oil or do have nukes/alliances with nuclear powers. If I were the leader of a small country sitting on a lot of resources, I'd prioritize getting nukes as quickly as possible too -- it's possibly the only entirely rational and non-evil thing Kim Jong-un's ever done.

Tellyawhat, I'm sure glad Syria didn't bomb Michigan over Flint, and that no one is threatening to bomb us over our cops shooting people constantly. Also, Guantanamo Bay's still up and running. As for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria? Well but there's RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA can't talk about that because RUSSIA RUSSIA PEE TAPE RUSSIA RUSSIA

That anyone believes in bombing people to save them is nuts, but that anyone believes the U.S. is bombing people to save them is triple nuts.

comments

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 21:47:21 GMT

I remember at one point, a year and a half ago, saying if someone was against Trump we could smooth out our differences and be on the same side for this at least.

I DID NOT MEAN PAUL FUCKING RYAN.

Of all the people against Trump (or seemingly against Trump), he is one of them who is debatably worse. Just... no. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy, and I wish upon them all the same horrific punishment: That they wake up one day realizing who they are and what they've done.

comments

Mon, 09 Apr 2018 18:57:35 GMT

If I read one more article about how Americans are so stressed and gee whiz we can't figure out why so let's push meditation, the fallout will not be pretty.

comments

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 01:24:09 GMT

Why White Evangelicism Is So Cruel

Excellent article, though it would have been better if the writer had been more clear in the end paragraph that white evangelicism only cares about RICH straight white men. That fact is laded through the rest of the article, though.

And this is why Southern Baptism has always felt like pure blasphemy to me, raised Northern Baptist-Lutheran-Quaker. I don't believe in such a thing as "blasphemy" any longer, and yet there's that gut response. The Christianity I was raised in centered human rights, environmentalism, helping the poor, justice and mercy. My grandparents marched with the Civil Rights movement and gave huge amounts of time and money to left-wing causes. And even the vast majority of other Christians I grew up with who weren't leftists loved science, did not take the Old Testament literally (or even care about it except for the Ten Commandments), and saw the Sermon on the Mount as the foundation of all of Christianity.

In Michigan, that mass media keeps conflating us with the Bible Belt is deeply offensive to people who are proud of our history of sending some of the first large regiments of volunteers to the Union side. People who never thought the Earth was 6000 years old, are fascinated by science, and who really do have plenty of black friends and family and don't appreciate being called names and treated like idiots because of things they cannot control by people who've never worried about the grocery bill. It was pissing people off enough when I moved. With the mainstream so-called "left" more interested in which celebrity used a word wrong than with lead in Flint's water, the rage is incandescent at this point.

But what are you gonna do? The Democratic Party recently put up someone for president who makes it ever more clear with every passing day that she hates us. Yes, us, I'm not gonna pretend where I came from isn't where I came from, and it was a pretty good place all in all. Trump's foul in every conceivable way. So what are you gonna do? Go fish.

After the union meeting, that is.

comments

Blah

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 06:17:17 GMT

In The Blue Castle, Valancy says her happiness bled backwards and she stopped remembering all the bad times with her family. I think that happened to me. I had literally forgotten what it was like to live with my father. He’s also way worse off mentally and physically than he used to be, but there are plenty of things that are all too familiar that I had literally forgotten.
( Read more... )

comments

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 18:31:43 GMT

I'm linking to the National Review, and not to bury it. Weird. "An Epidemic of Dishonesty on the Right."

Conservatives actually are starting to call out the far-right lunatics who've taken over the Republican Party. This isn't the first such article I've seen this year. Only took them about 30 years, but then conservatives tend to be rather slow. Also: too late, baby. You've noticed your house is infested with termites just as it's about to come crashing down on your head.

"If conservative ideas cannot prevail in the marketplace of ideas without lies, they do not deserve to prevail at all."

comments

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 20:34:36 GMT

So in the Great Food Internet Debates, which are as illuminating as most internet debates, there are two extremist camps, both alike in foolishness.

One says humans didn't evolve eating plants. We were mighty (macho) hunters always. The other says we didn't evolve eating meat. We were peaceful (girly) plant-eaters. As with all dumbass internet extremists, one side in which the dumbasses have embedded themselves can't see anything but the dumbasses on the other side. Someone needs to write a PhD thesis on this as a microcosm of the way human groups interact.

But anyway, my theory is that we were neither brave and noble hunters nor peaceful and noble gatherers. I think we were scavengers. Sneaking up and grabbing the leftover bones and cracking them open. Stealing eggs from nests. (Eggs are an utterly amazing food for humans when the birds get to live outside in the sunshine and eat bugs along with seeds.) Gleaning berries and nuts and tubers and whatnot -- obviously we can't digest the range of plants herbivores can. But we're not great at digesting fresh raw meat either. Yet nearly all cultures I've read about had some kind of rotten meat as a staple.

And look at how soft and weak we are as individuals, yet how mighty we are in large groups. Like hyenas.

comments

Fri, 16 Feb 2018 21:26:09 GMT

Okay so Richard Dawkins has been pretty terrible about a whole lot of things. I generally despise the man.

But I am totally here for the way he's going all in against the NRA right now. And we need as many allies for this as we can get. Dawkins is slavishly adored by a large number of people who are highly politically active.

Winning in politics means making common cause with people we wouldn't want to be around in other circumstances. And we can't keep losing on guns.

comments

Sun, 04 Feb 2018 09:47:16 GMT

Okay, so Jordan Peterson.

HE IS SO GODDAMN BORING.

I just. I can't even manage to watch any of his videos because they're far too dull. It's like how Kent Hovind talks about the earliest life forms getting married. The level you have to play at to get popular with certain groups is so low.

comments