Muindyr

Muindyr = Brothers (Sindarin).

Fair warning, there is a mention of rape in Shadow of Chaos’ segment. In the form of “Malog Bal’s a rapist, let’s kill him!” And thus, a rapist was killed.

Another fair warning: a lot of these characters aren’t from happy homes. Because of course they’re not. Who do you think created all of them? Or in the 843rd’s case, co-created them with my dad. I know whenever I talk about my family, it gets heavy, but it’s not all bad. My dad at least tried to engage with my love of storytelling. He did it during car rides, and I helped! They were basically pseudo-DnD sessions. Can you tell a story while driving? I can’t! That’s awesome, don’t you think? My dad’s the reason Beowulf has such a heavily, intentionally biased of view in his own storytelling! Sometimes, you need to be biased. I am biased in favor of ideals. Ideally, yes, I would’ve been born in a body I could live in and a family that loved me; but I know I wasn’t. And who knows? Would I still be this compassionate had I not gone through all this pain? Or would I turn my eyes away from all the suffering in this world? My traumas didn’t make me a stronger person, but I am who am, and I’m proud of who I am, even if I have to hide who I am as much as possible at “home”. I can be more myself in a story.

“In life you must write your own story, or one will be written for you.”
A.J. Garces, illustrator.

We’ve got a lot of storytelling to do. We need to lie to Chu as much as possible! He’s going from a world with zero people at all to a world with a bunch of different people in it! There’s a lot to catch him up on. And we are absolutely not telling him what actually happened between Mahal and Eru!!! He cries at ghost-type Pokémon, who knows what he’ll do if he encounters a ghost-type person?!

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Warfare

Alright, you stupid fuckin’ morons! Our guy’s back on medically mandated rest, but this time, he has energy to do things. What’s he gonna do with it? Host a Let’s Talk about Our Shitty Parents Party! There’s a lot of shitty parents to talk about in Arda. Let’s start with the shittiest non-god parent of the lot: Fëanor―the man who had so many mommy issues that he refused to spend time with his siblings, refused to give the Star Tree Balls back to Yavanna, made all his sons swear an Oath to get them back, rejected all of Nerdanel’s names for their youngest sons, and burned their second-youngest son alive because he wanted to go back to his responsible parent. If you’re going to burn boats, check where all your sons are first!

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People Hate Trans Men, Too

People don’t like when Powerpuff Girls want to become Rowdyruff Boys.

Content warnings, in order: description of real life transphobia targeting trans men, fictional powerful man preying on a younger one, description of real life child abuse and neglect.

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Praise

A lot of creatives don’t handle criticism well. That’s very understandable. When you put a lot of time and energy and emotion into something, it can be difficult not to take it personally.

I seem to have the opposite problem: praise does nothing for me.

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Children and Hospital Trips

Hey, parents, when you’re bringing young children to the hospital, we’d greatly appreciate if you could remind them to not be noisy while they’re there.

Patients are trying to heal, and staff are trying to focus on their jobs. Noisy environments put extra stress on everyone, which makes it harder for them to heal and work.

Most kids aren’t acting out of any sort of malevolence, they’re probably still just learning that the standards of appropriate behavior change in certain situations.

Maybe they’re excited to see a loved one, or there’s a fun toy in the gift shop, or maybe they saw their favorite food in the cafeteria.

And it’s a good thing that they’re excited!

Just remind them to be excited quietly while they’re visiting.

Once your kid’s outside, they can be as loud as they want!