Alicornutopia

...well now I'm picturing Valinor as full of these absurd locker-room rumors that get perpetuated whenever a particularly naïve young couple believe them enough that it actually works for them.

"It doesn't count if you do it standing up!" "It doesn't count if you keep your fingers crossed the whole time!" "It doesn't count if it's just the tip!" "It doesn't count if you're cousins!" "It doesn't count if you say the wedding vows backwards first!" "It doesn't count if you say 'no hetero'!"

The amount I’d need to believe the rumor to be confident using it as a primary marriage-control method is much higher than the amount at which it would actually work. I suppose that since accidental marriages are a thing anyway there would be marginal people who believe the rumors enough to try it but not enough for it to work.

And there would be more people who say “I heard this rumor! I thought it wouldn’t happen!” than who actually had sex for that reason, too.

"marriage-control method" XDDDD

I mean, I could see people who were in the process of getting carried away anyway going "hey, I heard it doesn't count if $superstition_of_choice" "really??? let's do that then"...

Also if either party expects the marriage to work it works, so one sincere believer and one 'well, she usually knows what she's talking about...' or one 'well, it wouldn't be so bad to be married without all the fuss and waiting...' and you're married. Let alone one 'oh wait I uncrossed my fingers oh no oh no now it happened'.

The first instance of Florida Elf is named "Minasse."

Aside from being a pretty word, it's Quenya for a fortified city. (Derivatives end up in the names of Minas Anor, Minas Morgul, and two Minases Tirith.)

Florida as we know it doesn't have many cities like that. The one exception is St. Augustine, which at least used to have a surrounding wall. The Augustine it's named after is known for a lot of things, but what he wrote his autobiography about was his former, let's just call them indiscretions. So it obviously makes sense that a character who decides it might be fun to do some sin, experiences Consequences, and regrets it, would be named after St. Augustine.

...Nice.

https://vast-journey-9935.herokuapp.com ... ply-274507

"Well, there's the question of why but - they're all supposed to sort of harmonize, maybe Melkor was supposed to be the one who understood incarnates."

Odds of a world where Melkor never fell, and hung around understanding incarnates while one or more of the others fell instead? (We discussed a few possible failure modes in IRC.)

My first thought for that is “Manwë cannot comprehend evil, does not realize his actions are that”, followed by “Mandos is less pleasant for the dead and had different criteria for returning”.

Welp, watch your step just crossed the line from "fun read" to "!!!"...

I am very much enjoying the adventures of the "have you heard?" elves.