Motivational *mumble* Friday Post

[dawn_felagund]

I am two days late this week! This is ridiculous. My theory that my brain works worst on Wednesdays (Wednesdays have been my least favorite day of the week since I was a little kid) is being proven by my attempts to make motivational posts on Wednesdays! My apologies, everyone.

This week's quote is in honor of muses ... or whatever that crazy, fickle force is that makes us write like unstoppable superheroes one day and then fritter away the entire uninspired day on Tumblr the next. I also liked it because this is, after all, the Season of Writing Dangerously, i.e. taking creative chances that might sometimes feel a little like madness.

"The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist ... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings."
~Plato

As always, feel free to brag, rant, plead for help, whine, celebrate, cheer each other on, and anything else related to your SoWD projects!

If you have a quote, image, video, or other idea that you think would inspire your fellow participants in one of these motivational posts, please do let me know. Also, we're coming up on the halfway point of SoWD in about two weeks, and we have something special planned for that occasion. If you like making banners and such and would like to help us out, please let me know. (If you've volunteered generally to help with SoWD, no need to volunteer again; you're on the list of people I will contact.)

Here's to a week of madly productive muses! :)

Comments

[ysilme]

I'm so sorry I managed to do something wrong with your answer to this, indy1776, so now it seems gone. As I still got your answer in my inbox, here it is again:

indy1776 wrote:
With the caveat that I have no freaking clue how "herald" fits in-- my general guess is that he's close to Gil-Galad and may possibly be something like an aide or second-in-command-- here's a link to the modern Bristish Army ranks (British Army website) and a link to the World War 1 ranks (unsourced Wikipedia article). I went with those because I figured that-- if any-- army would be what Tolkien would base the Middle-earth armies on.

I hope that helps somewhat!

Thank you very much! The links help me to translate what I know from other military, but I'm still unsure which of these ranks and functions would have likely or possibly existed at a military as Gil-galads, and what exactly were the functions of each position. I assume since the society in question is organised much more like a feudal system than like a parliamentary monarchy or a democracy, the military functions must equal rather those of a feudal system. I've read up on herald so far and find the medieval interpretation of it rather fitting, which makes him an envoy in a feudal system, like the predecessor of a diplomat. They had diplomatic immunity, but I'm wondering, for example, if this would still be fitting if the herald in question, Elrond in this case, would also be a second-in-command, and/or if it would be exceptional that a herald also would or could be the second-in-command or not.

[independence1776]

You're welcome!

As for the ranks and whatnot, those may be different-- but there's only so many ways to organize a large group of people to be effective at fighting. Small groups of people led by an officer who answers to officers in charge of several small groups and so on up the line makes the most sense to me. I don't know too much about fuedal army organization, though.