Hmmm.

[dragonlady7]

On Rampant Speculation:
We're up to two new bartenders they've hired now, at work. All my current co-workers agree: there are not enough hours to go around as it is. There has been talk of them adding another bar, but we know that will be months away at the earliest. The first new one starts this week; the second new one starts probably next month.
Speculation as to who will be fired is rampant but unfocused. Each of my coworkers is absolutely solidly sure they know who's going, but, er, each is convinced of a different person.

On Poor Management:
I heard yet another thirdhand possibly unfounded rumor that I got secret-shopped again and the secret shopper was deeply impressed by me. I am considering going to the uber-manager and complaining: if I had done poorly, you bet I would've been hauled in for a lecture and would have been told all about it. I did well, and have heard about it only via rumor, from no less than two sources now, neither of them upper management. (Who? A supervisor, and a cashier. A cashier. Who had heard it from a bartender (with whom, by the way, I speak daily, and who has not seen fit to mention this tidbit to me). Who had heard it from a supervisor, most likely. Who had heard it from, presumably, upper management. Make that a fifth-hand rumor.) So, in short, this is being discussed openly, but I have not been informed. I find that rude and rather stupid. I'm not asking for a reward. I'm just asking for official recognition. Not even written. Just, someone saying, yes, you did well. Rather than people "having heard" this rumor of my prowess.
Jeez.

Well, I'm pretty sure it's not me who's going to get fired. Although that, likewise, may be rumor. Maybe I do suck and the fact that I work harder than I have to does go unnoticed. It would be very like them.

On Being A Bloodthirsty Backstabbing Bitch:
Must admit, have been heavily into spreading gossip about who's getting fired. Guilty pleasure, but it amuses me. (There are two people who are so infuriatingly arrogantly incompetent I would be pleased to see them go. Both of whom have made my job harder when I have worked with them. The others, mostly I like them. At least they don't make me do their dishes or stock their coolers. Note: I haven't had the balls to mention the firing rumors to either of them.) Also, the more people get fired, the faster I move up the seniority list. One more person gets enough hours, and I'm out of that Club. And is it vulture-like of me to hover around watching the seniormost bartender who was out sick for three weeks because she hurt herself, and to squee inwardly when she said she was looking to cut her hours? She's in some prime real estate, hours-wise, and while I won't get any of her hours, the ladder will shuffle up and I'll at least not have quite so many second-server-at-Allstars-so-you-make-$3-shifts. This job, it is making me bloodthirsty. Though to be fair I get better shifts already than my seniority deserves, by simple merit of being always available all the time. So I get dicked around and scheduled on whims, but an inordinate number of times, it is totally worth my while to come in. (I do think they tend to give better shifts to people they know are making their sole living from this job. As opposed to the college kids who admit that they just need the money for boozeks. Once I tearfully explained to Tom that I was my household's sole income earner, he repented of giving me 16 hours a week in the Club and started splitting Club duty between me and the bartender just senior to me, which is actually how it's supposed to be done. Jerk. It shouldn't have taken tears on my part to effect that policy change. Learn to manage, people.)


God that was a satisfying little essay. I feel better now. My headache just disappeared, too. Weird. Eerie.

Have been puttering with Valinor scenes and come to several odd stumbling blocks: once the Trees were killed and all light extinguished, wouldn't all the plants die? Which in turn would cause crashes in animal populations? (first go herbivores, then carnivores who prey on them, etc. up food chain: think dinosaurs and meteor.) And also, without any light, the world would be plunged into an ice age.
Obviously, there is great magic in the world that prevents this from happening. Since the world is very obviously not bound by the laws of physics in any way at all. But it is not explained. And so:
I have to deal with a framework of poorly-explained magic. Now, i write in a very realistic and detailed style. What the hell, dude? What do I do? C'mon, Professor. I'm not even a scientist.
(Reason for rant: Thought of detail that dandelions close in the dark. Struck me that dandelions would close now that the Trees were dark. In the dark, in fact, no flowers would bloom. What a neat little detail! Wait, all the plants would die. Wait. Aw crap! I made myself sad.)
So, anyhow, am muddling through as best I can. but a question: Could you get a tan from Laurelin? Or were the Tree-lit Eldar all pasty Gothlike creatures?
*pictures Ecthelion in rubber suit*
...
...
... Aw crap, looks like I'm done for the night.

Comments

[elvses.livejournal.com]

I think Tolkien was banking on starlight to keep everything growing. That and random Ainu presence (as Melian in Doriath). If Lúthien could cause flowers to grow just by walking, think of what Melian could do!

Maybe Tolkien-world plants don't require photosynthesis. They just sort of... exist. Spontaneous generation. Like 17th-century mice.

[tehta.livejournal.com]

I am too lazy to check, but I am pretty sure that the 'Myths Transformed' bit in Morgoth's Ring deals with the many physical impossibilities of the sun/moon myth, which apparently started to bother Tolkien late in life.

But before that... didn't Yavanna control the plants in Valinor, anyway?

[gypsum.livejournal.com]

Tehta took my post. There is an essay in Morgoth's Ring in which Tolkien realizes that it was pretty ridiculous for there to be no sun and moon until after the Trees died. Like you have, he realized plants wouldn't grow in Middle-earth unless there was light. That means so photosynthesis, no life, and kind of a problem, He tries to rework the myth so as to eliminate that bizarre sun and moon story that's in the Silmarillion, but finds he can't. As soon as he takes away the fact that Yavanna made the Trees for light and Melkor destroyed them, the myth collapses like a Jinga game.

I suspect that when he wrote early drafts of the Silmarillion, he didn't really think about it. Then when he finally got around thinking about whether or not this idea of these Trees providing light made sense, he realized, "Oops." But by then so much of the story hinged on th Trees that there wasn't much he could do to change it, and he couldn't come up with a post hoc explanation that made sense.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Yes, it seems that his own Oo Mythology fairy stories kinda bit him in the ass. You can do crap like that when you're writing fairy stories, but the moment you try to take them seriously, the total disregard for physics that was Kinda Cool in glossy myth-format gradually just becomes clunky.

Sigh. I think I'm just going to gloss over it as best I can.

But thanks for the details. Good to know the Professor knew his story was kind of farfetched even for a fairy story.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

But it mentions that when the first lamps were made that was the first spring and the first time plants grew.
I'm cool with the Valar etc. not needing there to be plants. But once you've introduced native life to Arda, you can't just have the plants go away and come back as they see fit. And if the plants are dependent on light some of the time, shouldn't they be all of the time?


Am also peeved at the fact that it's always dark so I can't talk about the color of anything because even people with exceptionally good night vision can't really see colors in the dark. Man, I picked a shoddy time to have my Required Backstory.

[tehta.livejournal.com]

But, like Claudio said, it's not completely dark: there is starlight. And Elves aren't quite people: I bet their vision is different. Also, flashlights to read by etc.


On the other hand... have you read Marnie's Galadriel/Celeborn story? She deals with this sort of thing rather nicely, talking about how differently the Sindar in M-e dressed before the Sun came. (With more attention to texture than to colour.)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Flashlights?
I bet Ecthelion's Mag-Lite was a silver one of those 4 D-cell ones.

Which one is her Galadriel/Celeborn story? I read one (I think by her) about Celeborn and Elu that had lovely details about Stone Age elves. My problem is that the Elves in Valinor must've been more 'civilized' than that.


Mostly I'm just struck by how thoroughly alien Valinor is to anything I've written before, and it's a bit disorienting. :)

[tehta.livejournal.com]

Oak and Willow, I think.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Er, what's her handle and what site should I look on for it? (I find fanfiction.net so hard to use that I can't keep track of any stories on it, which is where I think the other one was, only i can't remember what it was called or what the author's listed name was.)

[tehta.livejournal.com]

Here you go:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1285624/1/

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, thanks. I can't keep all the handles straight, man. :D

[sirielle.livejournal.com]

I read one (I think by her) about Celeborn and Elu that had lovely details about Stone Age elves

What are the stories you're talking about? I wish to read a good story of Cuivienen times - sort of what life might look there. Stone Age elves sounds like this ;)

[tehta.livejournal.com]

Claudio has a story that's set partly in Cuivienen:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1193419/1/
And Marnie has several early-Sindar stories:
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/339925/
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/536190/

They're two of my favourite Silmfic authors.

[sirielle.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the links!

I know Claudio's homepage and wait anxiously for Never Speak Nor Sing continuation, I love the story :) But haven't red any other fan fiction of Claudio (except elven bios and other funny stuff).

I don't know Marnie, I'll check her stories. But I have your Gathering the Pieces on my favorites list, really great story! I hope to find a words to review it someday :)

[tehta.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you! That's really nice of you.

I hope you like Marnie's stuff.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of okay with the concept that everything was just magic so it didn't really matter. Spontaneous generation: I'm all for it. So Yavanna said, "Bloom anyway you lazy sods," and the corn was like, "Okay," and all was well. Sure.

But I'm having trouble because it's not well-explained. So, like, what did the hosts of Fingolfin eat? Did they just graze their way through Valinor? But what about the Ice?
How long can Elves go without food anyway? In some cases it seems like they can go indefinitely-- I mean, how long was Maedhros hanging by his arm up there on that cliff? I doubt Morgoth fed him Evil Chee-Tos the whole time. I mean, if he were in such torment that he'd ask Fingon to kill him, wouldn't he just refuse to eat? So obviously starvation doesn't kill them as fast as it kills regular people.
But I can't imagine that a whole load of Elves are going to happily hang out in the Arctic for like twenty years without any food. (Even if they are impervious to cold, which strikes me as improbable-- I mean, they have to be made of flesh, and if flesh gets too cold it stops working. Has to.) So what the heck?

This is the problem when dealing with other people's myths. *grumble* If anything is possible, nothing is interesting. You gotta have rules, even if you make them up, and then you gotta stick to 'em. He's cheating and it just doesn't work. Bah.

[tehta.livejournal.com]

I think Maedhros was under a no-need-for-food enchantment, like Hurin later.

I also think the rebel Noldor spent some time gathering food for the journey, probably even stopping for a while to prepare for the Ice--that's why it took them so long. Lembas is a very concentrated food, and I bet they made sleighfulls of it. I also see them killing seals and things, and, eventually, their horses etc. Basically like your average Polar explorers.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Hm. The enchantments are mentioned explicitly? Or are they inferred? I miss these sorts of details all too frequently.

I did figure they were hoarding food. But they weren't exactly traveling through fields of supplies, were they? Or was Valinor so very cool that there were standing fields of grain ready to be harvested as per Yavanna's lembas recipe?

I have far, far too much background thinking to do for this! Augh. This is what I get for, in effect, switching fandoms.

[tehta.livejournal.com]

I thought the Hurin one was mentioned explicitly, but all I can find right now is Morgoth cursing him so he could not move from his chair of stone or die until Morgoth allows him to.

I think there might have been fields of grain near where Elves lived (like, say, Tirion and Alqualonde) where they would have stocked up. And I know my Feanorians took all they wanted from the Telerin warehouses.

Basically, I think they went into the journey fully prepared. They *knew* about making long journeys, or at least their elders did.