Elfthreads!

[DanielH]

How do elves make lifelike statues and tapestries without magic? Wouldn’t they need to literally glow in infrared, and therefore have a power source? I suppose it could be like our glow-in-the-dark stuff if you could make thread or paint or whatever which glowed at the right frequencies and brightnesses, but that would still need to spend a lot of time in Treelight or sunlight or similar in order to work reliably.

[jalapeno_dude]

I thought they were magic--pretty sure the tapestries, at least, were described as such in one of the threads... But, I mean, glass is opaque to many IR and UV frequencies, and it's not like it's emitting in them--reflectivity is different then emissivity. IR emission isn't literally heat, it's just that the black-body spectrum for room-temperature objects peaks in the infrared.

EDIT: So the point is that it's possible the statues/tapestries looked lifelike under the light of the Trees or sun, but not in the dark and/or cold, unless I'm missing a specific reference to the contrary somewhere.

[DanielH]

I know that IR emission isn’t literally heat, but a regular human (or presumably Elda) body does in fact emit IR. I suppose you might be able to get a reflection to look like it were actually glowing if you had enough skill, so it wouldn’t need to be quite as hard as I were thinking if you had some control of the surrounding conditions.

[Kappa]

There was a mention in one of the threads that you can use different types of stone that react to heat differently and get a statue that looks lifelike when seen at the right times of day, iirc.

[DanielH]

I vaguely remember that. I think it was in one of the Loki threads; I might check tomorrow.

[Ezra]

Mostly caught up on Evening Star. Where did all the fluff go.

It does mean I get to see Idaia meet her sort of alternate universe grandmother-in-law, which is great.

[DanielH]

Yeah, Evening Star has what in retrospect looks like a hundred-page prologue, which might make more sense if it had anywhere near a hundred pages of non-prologue yet.

When does she meet her grandmother-in-law? I assume you don’t mean a Miriel, but who do you mean? Is that one of her college friends or something?

Also, in Vala Disappoints, couldn’t they have asked Morgoth’s oath to include the clause “I am Melkor, Vala, lord of Angbard, whom your people call the Enemy”? That seems like better identity verification than the bird was.

[Ezra]

I mean The Psion the Witch and the Wardrobes.

[Timepoof]

I find paragraphs and paragraphs of dialogue, with little to no indication as to who is speaking (except context), very hard to read. Which sometimes happens in elfthreads.
Does anyone have anything that could help me?

[Kappa]

Yeah, it's sometimes hard to tell who is speaking when those long exchanges get going. I dunno.