Cat

@eyeofacat

elves, spaceships, stories Tumblr: conundrumoftime Fanfic: Tags: #RingsofPower #Doriath #MyFic

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Cat@eyeofacat· 24d

I can't tell if he's wearing a ring or not but i'm confused seeing people talk about 'photoshop errors' on reddit. Sauron holding up a shining ring - as if to offer it to someone, maybe? - while wearing a less ostentatious one on his own hand? hmm what might that foreshadow, a total mystery.

SDCC building wrap - spiky-helmed Sauron holding up a ring that glints in the light

Cat@eyeofacat· 25d

Sauron being a petty little bitch about Isildur three thousand years later is a wonderful moment.

"Tales out of the South,' Gollum went on again, 'about the tall Men with the shining eyes, and their houses like hills of stone, and the silver crown of their King and his White Tree: wonderful tales.
They built very tall towers, and one they raised was silver-white, and in it there was a stone like the Moon, and round it were great white walls. O yes, there were many tales about the Tower of the Moon.'
"That would be Minas Ithil that Isildur the son of Elendil built,' said Frodo. 'It was Isildur who cut off the finger of the Enemy'
'Yes, He has only four on the Black Hand, but they are enough,' said Gollum shuddering. 'And He hated Isildur's city.'
'What does he not hate?' said Frodo. But what has the Tower of the Moon to do with us?’

Cat@eyeofacat· 26d

Moved my big hoya plant to a location with less sun and it’s VERY happy

Hoya plant with lots of blooms growing on a trellis

Cat@eyeofacat· 29d

What in the Rothko was my phone taking photos of on the train this morning?

Photo collage of abstract looking variations on blocks of red, pink and purple colours

Cat@eyeofacat· Jul 5

why is the text on Mon Mothma's datapad there the lyrics to Blue Swede's 'Hooked on a Feeling' written in Aurebesh

Picture of a page of 'The Art of Andor' book showing Mon Mothma's datapad, by James Wheeldon.

Cat@eyeofacat· Jul 3

also personally i refuse to change anything about my writing style because of This Bullshit. I have loved my rule-of-three constructions and my punchy single paragraph lines for longer than Claude has and i’m not giving them up now.

snippet of one of my fics from 2006:

“The truth was that EarthForce didn't care, and PsiCorps didn't care, and this was more of a backwater than a frontline. He guessed at some level they knew that, anyway. Let them take what they could.
This, obviously, was before the Psi Cop showed up.”

Cat@eyeofacat· Jul 3

more - www.reddit.com/r/WritingWit...

6. THE ONE-SENTENCE PARAGRAPH OF GRAVITY
"No one spoke." "The room fell silent." "Rain continued to fall across the capital." "That was deliberate."
These are the prose equivalent of a movie trailer's bass drop. They exist to tell the reader THIS MOMENT MATTERS. If every fourth paragraph is a single solemn sentence, no moment matters because all moments matter equally. Reserve these for genuine turns. If you have more than two per scene, you're scoring a film, not writing a story.
(That last sentence - "you're scoring a film, not writing a story" - is a negation/resolution. Not X, Y. See item 7. At this point you may be wondering whether the guide can go a single entry without exhibiting a symptom. The answer, so far, is no.)

7. THE FALSE-PROFOUND NEGATION/RESOLUTION
"Not for justice. For control." "Not a hero.
Not a villain. Just a man with a sword." "Not a threat. Something worse."
Negate the obvious reading, then land on something meant to sound deeper. Works in two-beat and three-beat versions. Both are the same move: the writer arriving at a platitude through the scenic route.
("The scenic route" - trailing irony clause.
Item 4.)
If a detail matters, weave it into a real sentence. "He insisted on honesty because it made his employees predictable, and he valued predictability above most things, including honesty." That's the same information as "Not for justice. For control." but it actually tells you something about the character.

8. THE ABSTRACT-NOUN CHARACTER DESCRIPTION
"They were memory, flaw, hunger." "She was silence, patience, and rage." "He was ambition in a green hood."
This is the character-description equivalent of a motivational poster. It asserts depth without demonstrating it. If a character is compelling, show the reader through action, dialogue, or a specific observed detail. If you can't demonstrate it, you can just say
"she was compelling" plainly and move on with your life.
("And move on with your life" - the casual-dismissive kicker. A softer cousin of the fragment punchline. Al loves ending advice with a little shrug of faux-casual tone to signal that the matter is settled. It is not, strictly speaking, a crime. But it is a tell.)

THE MASTER TEST
Read your text aloud. If every paragraph sounds like it was written by the same person in the same mood, something has gone wrong. A grief scene should not have the same rhythm as a comedy scene. A fight should not have the same rhythm as a political negotiation. If your text has been Al-edited, the most likely symptom is rhythmic monotony - every scene given the same weight, the same fragment patterns, the same solemn pauses, the same trailing wit.

Cat@eyeofacat· Jul 3

additionally to this: AI fic *also* has style tells, which are not the same as unambiguous proof like Claude HTML or leaving a prompt in, but are noticeable things you get a sense of after seeing a lot of them. There is a whole subreddit for AI ‘writers’ where they talk about these things

3. THE DECORATIVE COMPOUND MODIFIER
"A ghost of smoked fish skin." "A whisper of aged leather." "A memory of burnt cedar."
Abstract noun + sensory detail = sounds poetic, means nothing. What does a ghost of fish skin
smell like that "faint smell of fish skin" doesn't? These constructions exist because they pattern-match to "literary" without requiring the writer to decide what something actually smells like. Use plain language for plain sensory facts. Save the poetry for when it does real work.
4. THE TRAILING IRONY CLAUSE
Every observation gets a subordinate clause that recontextualizes it with dry wit.
"He kept a meticulous house, which was another way of saying he trusted no one." "They called it diplomacy, which was a generous word for what actually happened." "He said it with the certainty of a man who had never been wrong about anything he considered important.
Which was either impressive or delusional, depending on the day."
One of these per page is a voice. Five per page is a tic. Apply the deletion test: if the trailing clause contains a fact, keep it. If it contains only tone, cut it.
Special mention: the "which was either X or Y depending on Z" construction. Al loves offering two balanced interpretations because it sounds thoughtful without committing to either one.

5. THE FRAGMENT LIST OF DRAMATIC SIGNIFICANCE
When the AI wants you to feel something, it breaks into fragments.
"Bodies. Thousands of them." "Not politicians. Not party aides. People who actually knew what they were doing." "Same sodium. Same mystery textures. Same stomach roulette." "Heroes.
Liberators. Gratitude." "Mooks. Playthings. Punchlines. Harem-bait."
One of these per chapter is a stylistic choice. Twenty-five per chapter is a nervous breakdown formatted as literature.
(That - "a nervous breakdown formatted as literature" - is a trailing irony clause. Item 4. The guide is now two for two on committing the thing it just finished describing.)
If you removed every fragment list and replaced them with actual sentences, would anything be lost besides rhythm? If the answer is no, the fragments are decoration.

Cat@eyeofacat· Jul 3

I love crosswords.

Crossword clue: “39. Author of Millions, A Life Force, Hail and Returning
Evil (11).” Answer is filled in as Machiavelli.

Cat@eyeofacat· Jul 2

WIPs folder lurches awake as if summoned:

"If you force it from me or kill me for it or take it from me under torture or deceit it won't serve you. It has to be given."
Sauron is quiet, unmoving. Nenya purrs against Celeborn's hand. The mystics watch with their strange mirror eyes and say nothing.
"And what if I put you back in that mask?" Sauron says.
Panic turns him into something almost too weak to stand, something that claws at the arm holding him in place and says "no" as if his tongue has already betrayed him. He can't react this way, it'll jeopardise everything if Galadriel senses - but she surely already has because the thought of that mask cold upon his face again is, is, is -
"Oh, you don't like that," Sauron is saying, and the grin curls through his voice.

And then the grip in his hair again hauls him back up to his feet and the knife is no longer at his throat. "Well, no mind. I'll simply need to take you as well."
Galadriel's fear is close to fury now and he does what he can to reassure her, his head low as Sauron shouts orders, has a horse brought over for him and someone tying his hands together at the wrists: Go on to Cirdan, go, I'll be all right. But she doesn't believe him and he doesn't really believe himself; it's hard to quell his own fear now and the memory of Maia power snaking around him again, again -
Galadriel's voice rings clear in his mind: I won't allow this. No.
Go, he wills her. And then, Win.

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 21

One of these networks can only tell the truth, one can only tell a lie, and one is taking you to Glasgow Central via Shotts.

wifi network selection screen: “My Networks:
#FreeStation-
WiFi
_ScotRailFree-WiFi
ScotRail free WiFi
ScotRailFree-WiFi”
(i

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 21

Excellent.

What is to be most appreciated about Titanic has little to do with its poster boy, Leonardo DiCaprio, though he is a brilliant actor for someone carrying on with Mariel Hemingway's face and such a thin, awkwardly pitched voice. What is to be appreciated about this film is that supported-and not overpowered-by a stunningly executed visual spectacle (surely unsurpassed in moviemaking) is an ephemeral little love story—part Wild Kingdom, part Lady Chatterley's Lover—in which we are allowed to see something very compelling that in real life can be awful and dispiriting to see: what young women in love are willing to do.
Certainly, at the end, DiCaprio as Jack gives Kate Winslet as Rose the best seat on their bit of flotsam, and upon his apparent death she does pluck him too precipitously from his post; still, it is Rose who surprises not just her mother but surely love itself and leaps from the safety of a lifeboat, through water, through air, to save her man, madly swimming upstream, through the corridors of a sinking ship (oh, girls, don't we know it) like a salmon to spawn. The hormonal conviction of it is exhilarating to watch, and much more reminiscent of walruses than of Edwardians.

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 21

The opening lines of Lorrie Moore’s review of Titanic - love this!

Titanic
I sometimes think of female adolescence as the most powerful life force human nature has to offer, and male adolescence as its most powerful death force, albeit a romantic one. For those of you who thought rationality and women's studies courses had gotten rid of such broad and narratively grotesque ways of thinking, welcome. Coffee is available at the back of the room.

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 18

still not really feeling much excitement for the football, but i was *not* going back to my desk today without *some*thing and i’m not desperate enough for the cafe’s sugar-free flavouring-free vegetable-based cakes right now.

small World Cup 2026 themed fairy cake on a desk

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 17

cannot sleep, looking through my fic folders: from a future scene of my TROP post-s2 fic, Celeborn is not in Menegroth (or Rhûn any more):

bottles of ink, a bowl of oranges, a jug of wine and two goblets. The wall beyond is carved into trees of stone that are so carefully inlaid with enamel and jewels and so intricately crafted in each twig and leaf and bough that it seems incomprehensible his younger self had not spent whole years simply staring at them.
"I thought we should meet in your territory for our first conversation," the elf sitting opposite him says. "Unfortunately it seems you don't currently have any and so I had to make do with the past. What do you think, then?
Accurate?"
What he thinks is grief and fury. Having Doriath taken from him had been a scarring wound that will never wholly heal, but being

offered it back in mockery and illusion - oh, it's a pain almost beyond the bearing.
But he knows who sits before him and he has known Maiar like this before. He knows to keep weaknesses quiet within himself.
"Not terrible," he says. "I think that wall was a little further back. Whose form is this you take, Gorthaur?"
The elf that is not an elf smiles as if grudgingly amused and angles his head to the side with the smoothness and cold focus of a hunting hawk. "Gorthaur... You're a little late with that. Even your own Sindar seem to have settled on Sauron now."
"My apologies. I've been away."

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 16

Crocodile fern

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 16

“I know your Teams status is on Do Not Disturb, but -“

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 12

Poem: “LADY JANE CAVENDISH.
An Answer to my Lady Alice Egerton's Song.
I cannot send you back my heart
For I have but my own, And as that sentry stands apart
So watchman is alone.
Now I do leave you for to spy Where I my camp will place, And if your scouts do bring allay Maybe yourself will face,
Then if you challenge me the field And would me battle set, I then as master of the fields
Perhaps may prove your net.
(c.I644)

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 9

Ashes and dust and thirsty dune withered and dry beneath the moon, under the cold and shifting air sifting and sighing, bleak and bare; of blistered stones and gasping sand, of splintered bones was built that land, o'er which now slinks with powdered fell and hanging tongue a shape of hell.

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 9

Been playing around with what TROP's Rhûn would have looked like before deforestation, based on the pre-deforestation ecology of the Canary Islands where it was filmed. Still a bit blocky but I like the look of it:

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 9

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 7

Oslo opera house

Large wall of glass windows showing broken reflections of sunlight on water

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 7

Roses

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 6

My house is overrun with these things

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 5

Lawrence Durrell, ‘Byzance’:

Byzance
Her dust has pawned kings of gold, Bodies the winter entered and tubed In cerements of damp their fallen stars, Invader of the minds their lichen covered, And between the stones moss,
And between the bones fingernails and hair.
Only the objects of their past estate remain, Dispersing now like limbs in different museums.
The crowns and trumpets tarnish easily, The tangles of ribbon rot like heads of hair In cupboards where they kept the holy chrism.
Only the eye in an ikon here or there, Amends and ponders and reflects neglects Dead monarchs toughened to a stare.

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 4

Real Househusbands of Coruscant: The Movie

Andor screenshots, Mon Mothma and Tay Kolma while Perrin says “Oh I don’t think you’re on the menu for tonight, Tay. The Senator is pitching politics, not charity.”

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 3

So tired I have no energy for anything at the moment BUT - I must share what the sky looked like earlier

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 2

🎶hey I’m a scammer and i hope you don’t know but here’s my insta so call me freyo 🎶

freya (Guest) left the following comment on Shapes strong and strange:
The voice of this fic feels very distinct. It has a strong sense of identity that made the reading experience especially memorable.
While reading, I pictured a small illustration inspired by one of your scenes. I'm sharing the idea below in case it sparks your interest.
insta: call_me_freyo
Posted: Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:23:47 +0000
Reply to this comment

Cat@eyeofacat· Jun 1

(for the sake of disclosure here are my stats for the latest fics i’ve written - my own stats anxiety demon was a lot harder to ward off when I was getting thousands of readers, weirdly.)

In Absentia (6,290 words)
Hits: 147 Kudos: 14 Comment
Threads: 5 Bookmarks: 4
Three lives in which Erskin couldn't save Mon (and one in which he could) (6,580 words)
Hits: 138 Kudos: 21 Comment
Threads: 3 Bookmarks: 8
It won't do to dream of caramel (3,578 words)
Hits: 135 Kudos: 6 Comment Threads:
4 Bookmarks: 2
Lie down and lick the sorrow from your skin (525 words)
Hits: 85 Kudos: 18 Comment Threads:
9 Bookmarks: 2

Challengers (Movie 2024)
Homewrecker (2,756 words)
Hits: 265 Kudos: 24 Comment
Threads: 3 Bookmarks: 7
The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth
- J. R. R. Tolkien
Shapes strong and strange (2,421 words)
Hits: 71 Kudos: 11 Comment Threads:
2 Bookmarks: 3

Entwined (1,745 words)
Hits: 35 Kudos: 7 Comment Threads:
2 Bookmarks: 0

Cat@eyeofacat· May 25

Andor fic I wrote for the Unsent Letters exchange: “In Absentia”, 6k words, gen, T. ‘Documents regarding the charge of treason against former Senator Mon Mothma: File C67-C: Evidence on potential collaborator, Erskin Semaj'. #MyFic archiveofourown.org/works/83002951