Alicornutopia

Even tiny forums with hardly any posts at all get spambots. They are everywhere.

I finally have time to do more threads - I've been ignoring thread requests for a while because overthreaded - and I kind of want to sandbox pealed!Epic having a worldleaping accident that leaves him not-adjacent to the peal. If you have a world that wouldn't be totally broken by dropping a neurotic child pseudodemon on it, shoot me a message.

I am curious how Two Hells!Midnight would react to this letter. I’m also curious how Silmaril!Midnight would, but I think it wouldn’t go as well there; it was written with the Two Hells version in mind.

Dear Midnight,

You like people to be better off to have you in their lives, and you like to not damage your possessions beyond repair. I’m afraid you’ve failed on both counts in one case, although you partially deny it to yourself. It turns out that Findekáno would take several at least several decades, perhaps centuries, without you in reach and not under the influence of mind-affecting oaths, in order to recover from what you’ve done; since I doubt you intend to give him that it seems safe to claim you are damaging him beyond repair. Additionally, you can clearly see for yourself that his life is not better for having you in it at the moment, even if it used to be.

There are other ways to get what you’re getting out of your relationship to Findekáno without compromising these other things you want. I’m sure those of your template who do not remember going through Angband would be happy to help. They will not try to force you to be “virtuous”, which I agree is (the way you think about the concept) a thing you are not and should not try to be. Your alts did try to be virtuous in that way, and it worked out terribly for them and they had trouble un-learning the parts of that they didn’t want to keep. I think they are all mostly at a point they like with regards to how virtuous they are, but if I’m wrong you could probably notice and help them.

I’m not sure if this will help or not, but you might also try to learn how the Bells think about the concept of virtue. It’s different from the way you do, and I expect you’d like it much better.

EDIT: I’m also curious if I got anything wrong. I believe everything I said here was correct, except that “happy to help” is a simplification.

You spelled "Angband" wrong.

Oops (fixed).

Midnight observes that 'will take several decades to get his head on straight' is not at all the same thing as 'damaged beyond repair' - these being Elves - and that he would totally after the Enemy is dead be willing to give Findekano a few decades if he wants them. He also wants it known that he is making Findekano better off by being more equipped to kill Morgoth, the achievement of which will make everybody better off for having trusted him. If his personal life were making it harder to stop Morgoth then it would obviously be unforgivable, but he invites a comparison with all of the other Ardas in the same time period and he thinks his looks the best positioned to win.

He also observes that a lot of people feel entitled to be more upset about this than his Findekáno is and that he is inclined to interpret this as posturing rather than genuine. And he is unwilling to take 'help' identifying the best way to get what he wants from people who feel really strongly that some ways of getting what he wants are Utterly Terrible because even if they thought those were the best way to get what he wants, they wouldn't admit it.

Is there a causal reason for Findekáno keeping him out of Angband or only a metacausal one he has no way of knowing about? Knowing what Glass said about flat Maitimos, that what Findekáno went through is much less bad than Angband, and how important a fully-functional Maitimo is to the war effort, I think what he did might actually have been best, though not for the much more minor psychological health reasons he actually did it for.

I also would point out that, while Findekáno is under coerced mind-affecting oaths, or coerced psychological torture, his amount of upset is not a completely trustworthy yardstick.

stop calling it Angbard!

I somehow always read it as that! I don’t know why I made that mistake the first (few) times I saw it, but it looks about the same so I don’t notice that I have it wrong when I see it.

ETA: In this case I was writing it and I thought “wait, I know I got this place’s name wrong, which was it? Oh, there it is in my phone’s autocorrect; that must be right”. I’m now removing it from my phone so that doesn’t happen again.

ETA2: It isn’t in my phone’s user dictionary; I don’t know why my phone thought it was a word.

He's by far more paranoid than most Maitimos for reasons related to the reasons he kidnapped his Findekáno and therefore didn't go to the parley, but the only reason he didn't get captured at some later point is metacausal.