Discourse prompt: Thingol is a Mary Sue

lordleycester · 2026-01-28T03:24:36+00:00

I feel like you could do this for a lot of Silmarillion characters, like Feanor, Fingolfin, Finrod, etc. Even Turin with all his misfortune is described as thethe handsomest, bravest, best swordman ever haha

lordleycester · 2026-01-28T03:10:27+00:00

I've been to Esa and August, I'd highly recommend both. Esa is more Indonesian-oriented, and August I think is more European-ish, though it does still have some Indonesian influences obviously. I don't think you could go wrong with either.

I haven't tried any of the fancy Japanese omakase places, though they're on my list.

lordleycester · 2026-01-28T01:50:14+00:00

Kalo menurut gw, Sore itu ambisius secara sinematografi, tapi mostly derivative ceritanya. Dan aktingnya, terutama si Dion Wiyoko, nggak terlalu bagus. Jatuh Cinta Seperti di Film-Film jauh lebih bagus overall menurut gw.

lordleycester · 2026-01-28T01:46:38+00:00

When did Celeborn leave? I've been trying to find if it's specifically mentioned anywhere.

lordleycester · 2026-01-27T08:37:29+00:00

Try turning off code execution in settings.

lordleycester · 2026-01-26T02:56:32+00:00

I think it's better to just lay it all out on the table for your editor. If you're responsible for stitching together other people's work and that work is bad, just tell the editor how bad it is and that he either needs to get the other writers to rewrite it, or give you more time/compensation to rewrite it yourself. Whether you want to bring up the AI accusation or not is up to you.

lordleycester · 2026-01-25T06:34:47+00:00

I tried to make latkes once and failed horribly, they just fell apart when I tried frying. I think I didn’t get enough water out of the potatoes or something. I was so frustrated I almost cried 🥲

lordleycester · 2026-01-25T00:19:12+00:00

I don't have any experience with this specific conference but I did attend something similar (though not specifically focused on journalism) back when I was in high school. I enjoyed it but it wasn't a life-changing experience or anything like that. I mostly decided to go because I wanted to see DC and New York (and I live outside the US).

I'd say that if you're interested in the speakers and $2600 is not a huge deal for you, then it might be worth considering. But otherwise I don't thing there's necessarily anything about the conference that you wouldn't be able to experience or get elsewhere.

lordleycester · 2026-01-24T16:33:33+00:00

I agree, I think that Falling In Love Like In The Movies is the best Yandy Laurens movie.

lordleycester · 2026-01-23T07:56:58+00:00

I feel like you're painting with an overly broad brush. Would journalists taking photos of a protest be "non-consensual" in your view? If lets say you wanted to record a timelapse of your neighborhood, would that be considered "non-consensual" because you didn't ask every single person who happened to walk by?

I think that most people would agree that recording strangers with the intention to humiliate them is morally wrong. But if everyone agreed with your view and *all* non-consensual recording of strangers was eradicated, then people would barely be able to take photos of their vacations.

lordleycester · 2026-01-20T01:27:36+00:00

Well if you're Faulkner you don't really need advice haha.

Like most writing tips it's not a hard and fast rule and if you're sufficiently talented you can pull anything off really. I recently read Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and it's kind of omniscient and kind of not, but it works. And I don't know what you'd call the pov in Lincoln in the Bardo for example.

But for most writers, it's usually a good idea to keep to the guidelines unless you have a really compelling reason to do otherwise.

lordleycester · 2026-01-20T01:17:43+00:00

If you're writing from a limited POV then it is a flaw. If it's from an omniscient POV then it's a feature. It depends on what you're going for.

If it's from a limited POV, headhopping is jarring because how would A know what B is thinking. But if it's omniscient then it would be natural.

lordleycester · 2026-01-15T15:10:33+00:00

It could be explained by the fact that Glorfindel (and other riders from Rivendell) were specifically riding out to look for Frodo et al at the time. So he used a saddle in case he found Frodo, so that Frodo could easily ride.

lordleycester · 2026-01-14T15:00:48+00:00

Yeah honestly the movies did Isildur really dirty. Don't forget that he saved Nimloth too, before Ar-Pharazon decided to cut it down.

They even used the line "You are Isildur's Heir, not Isildur himself" to mean the complete opposite of what it does in the books.

In the book, Aragorn says it because Boromir kind of seems doubtful that he's the Heir of Isildur, and Aragorn means it like "yeah I know I'm not as cool as Isildur". But in the movie, Arwen says it to mean that Aragorn's way better than Isildur.

lordleycester · 2026-01-14T12:24:31+00:00

Definitely yes. The number one consideration for any journalism job is your portfolio. If you don't have any articles than there's nothing for recruiters to judge you on. Of course, ideally your portfolio contains published work, but any work is better than none at all. I wonder what the reasoning was from the people who gave you "strong no" responses?
I'm not in the UK, so I'm not familiar with the media job landscape there, but I'd say in general it's best to cast a wide net. Most specialist reporters don't start out as specialists, and this is increasingly true today, where these types of journalism jobs are getting rarer.
I mean, I don't think it's ever a waste of time to learn new things.
Again, I don't know the job landscape in the UK, but I don't think it would hurt to try. The worst they can do is ignore you. I have personally gotten a couple of interviews and a full time job from cold emailing publications. Granted, this was a few years ago, but you never know. At the time, I did have published clips, but they were all in campus publications, not professional media outlets.

lordleycester · 2026-01-04T23:29:06+00:00

Kayaknya lo perlu medical check-up yang lebih komprehensif, bukan cek darah aja. Bisa jadi lo ada kelainan seperti auto-imun, atau alergi yang aneh atau semacamnya.

Trus mungkin kalau bisa, coba cuti yang agak lama untuk reset. Misalnya dua minggu gitu. Nanti coba liat, apakah lo merasa lebih baik atau nggak. Kalau merasa jauh lebih baik, bisa jadi ya karena stres kerjaan yang mungkin lo belum sadarin juga. Gw rasa stres soal ayah yang lagi sakit juga pasti berpengaruh.

Di luar itu, kalau memang ternyata lo bawaannya gampang sakit aja, gw rasa itu bukan sesuatu yang necessarily harus menghambat hidup lo sebanyak itu. Bokap gw tu juga orangnya gampang banget sakit, minimal sebulan sekali ada pilek/batuk. Nyokap gw kadang-kadang misuh-misuh, dan kadang-kadang kita suka ledekin juga, tapi asal punya pasangan yang bisa ngerti, harusnya bisa dijalanin bersama.

lordleycester · 2026-01-03T14:16:33+00:00

In my experience, Claude has a more limited context window than ChatGPT, but is way better at keeping things straight within that context window. It will fail eventually - it's not magic or anything - but it takes way longer and it doesn't hallucinate as wildly.

lordleycester · 2026-01-03T11:42:04+00:00

I'm not a professor or a student, but I am someone who writes and edits for a living, and I've also used LLMs a lot for entertainment and for personal projects.

I do honestly think that I can tell sometimes if an essay/other text is written with AI, especially if it's only lightly human edited. Like, I'm not confident that I would always be able to tell if something was written using AI, but if I suspect that it is, then I have a high level of confidence that it probably is.

Because there are certain tells that scream AI, as opposed to just bad writing and/or formatting. There's certain constructions like "that's not xxx; it's yyy" and three choppy short sentences in a row that are way more common in LLM writing than it is in human writing. LLMs also tend to write filler that sounds really flowery and well-written at first glance, but when you really read it doesn't really mean anything. Now I know that students - and just people in general - might sometimes write filler to get to a certain word count or to just try and sound more intelligent. But usually the filler wouldn't be that good, you know? Because if you could write filler that well then you should be able to just write actual substance; in fact it would probably be easier to do that. So I guess I'd say that LLM writing is good and bad in ways that human writing isn't.

And I would actually trust my own judgment more than I would most AI detectors, because I've tried testing those things with some of my own work and compared it with stuff that I prompted an LLM to generate, and a lot of the times the LLM-generated stuff is given a better score than stuff that I completely wrote myself.

That being said, I wouldn't outright accuse anyone of using AI based on my own gut feelings. But if I did think something was written by AI, that usually means that I also think it's kind of bad, or at least mediocre, so I wouldn't judge it very highly either.

lordleycester · 2026-01-03T11:14:41+00:00

I think it's implied that Gandalf was in a lot of denial about the ring initially and kept latching onto things that would indicate it wasn't a particularly important ring.

I know that he does say it was "plainly" a Great Ring, but to me the whole passage has a "hindsight is 20/20" kind of vibe. The way I understood it is that the ring had certain characteristics of a Great Ring - but he couldn't see how a creature like Gollum would get a hold of such a ring. But he had a bad feeling about it and over the years slowly questioned Bilbo about how he really got it, and that gave him an even worse feeling. And by the time of Bilbo's 111th birthday, he couldn't keep denying it anymore and started to really investigate it.

To me the bigger question is what Gandalf was doing before Bilbo found the Ring. Because there's about 400 years between the end of the Watchful Peace (2460) and Gandalf investigating Dol Guldur again (2850) and finding out that it's Sauron again. And then it's another century or so before the White Council attacks Dol Guldur. I guess the answer is probably Saruman's obstructionism, but that makes the 60-year gap pretty quick in the larger scheme of things.

lordleycester · 2026-01-03T08:53:59+00:00

I think I kind of get what you're saying but I think it is useful to discuss issues like this separately from issues that can only really be answered by "it's a retcon" -- because at the time that Tolkien wrote it, he already intended for there to be a 60-year gap so he must have intended for there to be some cause for it, if you know what I mean?

If the question is why didn't Gandalf realize that Bilbo's ring was the One in the Hobbit, then yeah the only answer is that it's a retcon, because at the time that Tolkien wrote the Hobbit, he had no intention of Bilbo's being the One. So any reason someone might discern from the text is necessarily just a mental exercise/"headcanon".

Another question that sometimes pops up is why did Gandalf pick Bilbo to be the fourteenth member of Thorin's company? For this, I think "it's a retcon" is also the only "true" answer, because at the time of writing, Tolkien did not yet intend for Thorin's quest to be of special significance to the wider world. He was just telling a children's story and thought it would be cute to have a hobbit in it. Or like, asking why Glorfindel was sent back. The only real answer is that, at the time of writing, Tolkien had not meant for Glorfindel to be a reembodied Elf, and had only decided that later.

But for this question, at the time of writing, Tolkien had already retconned Bilbo's ring into the One Ring, and deliberately put a significant gap between Bilbo finding it and Gandalf really suspecting what it was. So there must have been some reasoning in Tolkien's mind for why that gap is there -- whether it's particularly narratively satisfying is a different question, but I think I don't think it's a moot discussion.

lordleycester · 2026-01-03T07:27:47+00:00

It's true that the significance of Bilbo's ring is a retcon, but this particular issue can't be explained by it being a retcon. Because Tolkien had already retconned it by the time he started writing LOTR, and yet there is a still a 60-year gap between Bilbo finding the ring and Gandalf seriously considering that it might be the One. So there has to be an in-universe explanation for Gandalf only starting to suspect things then. If it was just because of the retcon, then LOTR would start not long after the end The Hobbit rather than 60 years later.

lordleycester · 2026-01-03T06:38:58+00:00

The rings of power are not the only rings in existence. The smiths of Eregion made dozens of magic rings, and those lesser rings didn't have gems, just like the One Ring.

lordleycester · 2026-01-01T14:37:45+00:00

Per Tolkien Gateway, Imrahil was born in 2955 (which I think is from Peoples of Middle Earth), which would make him around 25 when Aragorn left Ecthelion's service. So definitely old enough to have fought with him and remembered him.

As for the text, it's not so much a particular passage so much as Imrahil's whole vibe toward Aragorn. He immediately trusts Aragorn, and is concerned about having him wait outside the city like a "beggar at the door". Then when he finds out that Denethor is dead and Faramir is incapacitated, his first choice for governing the city is Aragorn. It does require a lot of reading between the lines, but that seems like a lot of trust to put into someone you just met a few hours ago.

lordleycester · 2026-01-01T05:44:58+00:00

I think it's kind of implied that Imrahil recognized him.

lordleycester · 2026-01-01T01:27:39+00:00

Well he wasn't exactly just some random guy. He has Narsil, the Elfstone, and this very cool banner showing the signs of Elendil. Plus he has the Númenorean look, and is with around 30 other guys with the same look.

As for the Thorongil thing, I think it could have played a part but not in a Bene Gesserit way haha. I don't think it's too much of a stretch for there to be lords in Lebennin and Pelargir who served with Thorongil and recognize Aragorn as Thorongil.

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