Latest Posts by penelopes-poppies - Page 2

do earthquakes exist in middle earth. do they have tectonic plates

i wonder how much of anakin’s sense of betrayal toward obi-wan, his utter hate and resentment of him, is based on how if their roles were reversed anakin would stop at NOTHING to get obi-wan back. he will slaughter thousands to save his loved ones, he’s still trying to find a way to get padme back years later, but he stands there and tells obi-wan “anakin skywalker is dead” and obi-wan just… believes him. and walks away.

to anakin that level of non-attachment, that acceptance of reality, is unfathomable. they loved each other, they love each other, so they must continue to act out their feelings as they always have— obi-wan by trying desperately to help or reach anakin, and anakin by refusing him, by hunting him, torturing him, hating him because he loves him so.

when vader tells luke “obi-wan once thought as you do,” there is a profound grief behind those words. obi-wan thought he could reach me, but he gave up because he stopped loving me, because i made him stop. anakin could’t understand until the very end that obi-wan loved him, loved him always— but that in this life, the only way obi-wan had left to love anakin was to let him go.

They had overnight flower delivery in the 1890s??

No offense to people who function properly but I’m different

Working on (yet another) ATLA wip in which during the invasion Azula helps Zuko escape and goes with him (because her beloved dumbass of a brother clearly has not been paying attention to all her subtle warnings on how not to get dead and clearly needs a more direct approach at keeping him alive and mostly in one piece). And in the process of getting the fuck out of dodge, Bato who's been separated from everyone else ends up accidentally crashing their escape party along with Toph and the four of them end up on the run together.

Toph gets along with the two runaway royals who are as suspicious and untrusting if Bato as he is them...at least until the fire siblings unintentionally trauma dump about their fucked up childhood and Bato decides "I'm dad now" and adopts them against their will.

Eventually Azula and Zuko just give up on fighting it and are like "okay cool, you're gonna be Firelord after we kill Ozai and then we can just chill for like, five god damn seconds"

And anyway eventually they all meet up with the Gaang and Hakoda and co and it's just like...

Hakoda:

This is my daughter Katara: Master Water Bender, Teacher of the Avatar, brave and true of heart.

And my son Sokka: genius inventor, master strategist, unmatched in his fierceness and loyalty.

Bato:

This is my new daughter Azula. She'll sell your soul to satan for a fire flake and then use that fire flake to take over hell.

And this is my new son Zuko. He's faral and will probably bite you. Don't leave him alone too long or he'll probably end up trying to fight god again.

And this is Toph... I don't know if I've adopted her or if I'm being held hostage but either way I've started saving up for the next time I have to bail her out of jail.

You're laughing. The royal necromancer just lost their job, and you're laughing

Watch out Dracula he’s got… Academic Credentials

funny how Queen Elizabeth II is trying to make today all about her, when its LITERALLY my first day of school today🙄🙄

"omg youre pissed off about the elves HAIR LENGTH???" yes! yes i am! because tolkien created an incredible subversive fantasy world (IN THE 1930s) that rejected the influence of modern society - beauty norms were different, gender norms were different, its what made tolkiens world a WORLD. it was unique. but instead of actually caring about tolkiens unique and beautiful world, amazon has chosen to busy themselves with making sure the beauty standards are THEIR beauty standards, the gender norms are THEIR gender norms, the messages being spread are AMAZON'S messages, not TOLKIEN'S messages. sometimes things have nuance to them - maybe not to you, fine, but that doesnt mean the nuance isnt there.

Bilbo was declared dead while he was away in the Hobbit (and had to do a bunch of paperwork to get declared alive again) but there’s no indication he was formally declared dead after leaving the Shire, even though most people assumed he had died.

Therefore I posit: having a missing person declared dead in the Shire requires the consent of their next of kin. Whoever Bilbo’s next of kin was at the time of the Hobbit (possibly Otho? I’m not sure) had him declared dead at the first opportunity but Frodo refused to ever do it.

Frodo had anxious hobbit bureaucrats knocking on his door every couple of years like ‘Mr Baggins… blease… it’s been 10 years… he was eleventy-one… can we fill out his death certificate yet’ and Frodo was like ‘absolutely not’.

Early on he genuinely couldn’t bring himself too but after a while it was more that he enjoyed irritating the local magistrate’s office than anything else.

Full-sized image here.

Breaking news of the day! Most characters who die in the Quenta Silmarillion die violently! I expect zero people who have read The Silmarillion to be surprised by that.

In other news, if you’re a Silmarillion character, simply knowing Túrin Turambar at some point in his relatively brief existence is just about as deadly as getting involved in the centuries-long pursuit of the Silmarils.

This is all in good fun, folks, because I can’t be the only person who likes crunching Silmarillion death stats on a Friday. But if you want the dull details on how I determined what went where, it’s below the jump.

Keep reading

“But you always have to watch Tolkien with water. He never uses it unmeaningfully. Pools and lakes mirror stars, and hold hidden things. The Anduin has contrastin banks and, moreover, reeks of history. In a way, it is history, and the Fellowship is going with the current, to break up in confusion at the falls of Rauros. It is worth pointing out that when Aragorn later uses the same river, he comes up it, against the current, changing a course of events that seems inevitable. The other water is of course the Sea. This has been sounding dimly in our ears throughout the book, but in Lothlorien it begins to thunder. Does it suggest loss, departure and death? Certainly. But since water is always life to Tolkien, it must also be eternity.”

— Diana Wynne Jones, ‘The Shape of the Narrative in The Lord of the Rings.’

Okay I think I know what it is. Jee is like an eagle. Totally stunning from side view. Derpy from front. It's the shape of his hair and nose, I think????

well… you are right! but… this is not a nice thing to say to our lieutenant and poor hawky!

Music by treelight, at the House of Finwë.

Foreground: Turgon playing a flute, Galadriel annoyed by Fëanor, Finrod and Maglor singing a duet, Aredhel playing a tambourine. (Aredhel and Galadriel are the same age, and maybe the elven equivalent of 13-14 years old here.)

Background: Eärwen and Finarfin dancing, Celegorm objecting to Huan's singing, Fingolfin with baby Argon and Anairë, Fingon and Maedhros more interested in each other's company than in music.

One thing in Lord of the Rings I’ve found extremely relatable lately is how the hobbits react to apocalyptic horrors by focusing on the mundane details of their day.

“Looks like we’re on a hopeless journey into Hell in the middle of a world-ending event where everything we know and love will be destroyed. What are we going to have for breakfast today, Mr Frodo? :D”

One of the lawyers currently prosecuting Alex Jones got interviewed on knowledge fight. He talked about how he had to watch 150+ hours of Infowars content as background for the case.

He talked about how he had to take regular breaks because he could feel himself passively absorbing information against his will.

One of the lawyers currently prosecuting Alex Jones got interviewed on knowledge fight. He talked about how he had to watch 150+ hours of Infowars content as background for the case.

He talked about how he had to take regular breaks because he could feel himself passively absorbing information against his will.

[ID: screenshot of part of a Craigslist ad. Text reads, "Make/manufacturer: Mama Goat

"Model name/number: Baby

"Size/dimensions: small"

End ID.]

saw this on a craigslist ad for baby goats

Concerning Hobbits (of Color)

Okay it’s been a whole day and I’m still angry about that hobbit casting thing, so let’s lay down some Tolkien canon here.

Fact 1: Per Tolkien, there were originally three races of hobbit. The Stoors were a small group, they were broad and stocky, they grew facial hair, they liked rivers, and their skin color is not specified, so Tolkien probably meant them to be white (but there’s no reason they have to be, since again, not specified). The Fallohides were a tiny group, they were thin, pale and tall, they were bold and good with languages, and they like trees. The Harfoots were the distinct majority, they lived in holes, they had hairy feet, and they were brown. Tolkien is super clear on this. He explicitly calls out Harfoots as having browner skin than other hobbits when describing the races and he uses phrases like “nut-brown skin” and “long brown fingers” when describing specific hobbits to back it up.

Fact 2: Britain planted its ravenous imperial flag firmly in the soil of India three centuries before Tolkien wrote The Hobbit. He knew what a brown person looked like. He would know he was not evoking a slightly darker shade of Caucasian when he said a person had brown skin.

Fact 3: Bilbo, Frodo, and all of their friends are aristocracy. Sam is the only hobbit we ever meet who is an actual laborer. In Tolkien’s time, laborers worked in the sun and middle class and aristocracy stayed inside where there was something resembling temperature control. Apart from Sam and Aragorn, no one in the Fellowship (or Company) ever voluntarily got a sunburn. If Tolkien talks about brown skin he’s talking about brown skin, not a farmer’s tan.

Where does this leave us?

Well, Tolkien says that after colonizing the Shire, the three hobbit races mingled more closely and became one. This leaves us with two options.

Option A: He’s talking about that thing that sci-fi writers sometimes do where “everyone is mixed race.” So all three races would have smeared together into a single uniform color. What color? Mostly Harfoot, aka brown. The “strong strain of Fallohide” in the Tookish and Brandybuck lines means maybe they’re white-passing, but in this scenario all hobbits are brown.

Option B: He’s talking about a more melting-pot scenario where visual racial distinctions still exist but everyone lives side-by-side in a fairly uniform culure. The Tooks/Brandybucks having a “strong strain of Fallohide” means that they are themselves remaining strains of Fallohide, and are straight-up white. Merry, half Took and half Brandybuck, is thus white (possibly part Stoor, given Brandybuck comfort with water); Pippin, half Took and half Banks, is either white or biracial. The Baggins family, sensible owners of the oldest and most venerable hobbit-hole anyone knows of, are blatantly Harfoot, making Bilbo and Frodo (half Took and half Brandybuck respectively) also biracial. Fallohides being exclusively adventurous high-class types, and the Gamgees being staid low-class homebodies with a distrust of moving water, Sam is obviously Harfoot and thus completely brown. (Smeagol, a Stoor, is probably white, but as discussed above, doesn’t have to be.) In this scenario, a minimum of three of five heroic hobbits are various shades of brown, four out of five of them could be, and most background hobbits are brown.

In conclusion, if you think all hobbits are white, you are canonically wrong. If you geek out over Aragorn wearing the Ring of Barahir, rage about Faramir trying to take the Ring, and do not even notice, much less complain, that Sam, Bilbo and Frodo are being erroneously portrayed by white guys, you need to reexamine the focus of your nerdery.

tired of the whole movement that’s people saying ’i read 200 books in a year’ and reading as a means of boasting and hardcover books being bought and never read after the instagram picture and most booktubers reading and recommending the same books and poorly written books selling fast because they have pretty covers and tropes people like and authors on twitter being afraid to say anything serious out of fear of being divisive and the whole let people enjoy things dialogue every time someone expresses that they think something is written shittily as is their god given right to form an opinion as a reader without randos on the internet taking it personally because OMG someone else didn’t agree that this book is good!? TIME TO ESCALATE THINGS TO RIDICULOUS LEVELS 😤😤😤 and also i’m tired of book influencers setting up this false dichotomy between victorian classics or modern pulpy romcoms while vastly ignoring the existence of classics written by people of colour and people from non first world countries

Ozai is so pathetic, like that “take his bending away haha he’s harmless now” trick would never have worked on Zuko, if you took his bending away he’d just grab his swords and come at you twice as hard, Azula doesn’t have swords or anything but she’s pretty good at hand to hand and amazing at talking her way out of problems, Iroh bust himself out of prison with no bending at all, meanwhile Ozai? Gets his bending taken away and then just collapses, doesn’t even try anymore, then just sits in prison and tries to get into Zuko’s head some more, he could have trained up and tried to break out too! But no! Bet he can’t break steel bars with his bare hands. Bet he can’t kick a steel lever in two. Bet he can’t even do a flip.

Also we never really see him do any really impressive firebending apart from when he has magic comet power, I guesss he shoots some lightning at Zuko, but that’s it and Azula is still better at the lightning thing. Azula has blue flames. Zuko can do firebreakdancing and bend with his swords. Does Ozai, who is not 14 years old, have blue flames? No he doesn’t.

He didn’t even do his coup himself, Ursa had to kill Azulon for him! Could have just challenged Iroh to an Agni Kai for the throne but he didn’t bc he knew he’d lose.

And then he only ruled for like 6 years! He lost a war that had been going on for 100 years bc of a bunch of kids.

Loserlord indeed

You know the ambiguously timed event that Tolkien describes as "Elrond sends for Arwen, and she returns to Imladris; the Mountains and all lands eastward are becoming dangerous"? I was thinking about it, and here's a half-baked Arwen headcanon:

Arwen immediately correctly assumes if her father, who never became controlling even after what happened to Celebrian, is telling her what to do, he's got a legitimate reason to be afraid and it would be wise to listen.

(Bonus points if he sends the twins to fetch her and the three of them spend the trip back home discussing the situation because "Get your sister away from incoming danger" is not something Elladan and Elrohir have ever heard before)

Arwen hasn't spent all these long visits to her grandmother doing nothing. She's been learning to be an elf queen, thank you very much. Who did Galadriel learn to be a queen from? Melian. Arwen's education is probably the best a queen can get by the Third Age tbh

Arwen doesn't make any dramatic announcements or anything, but she quietly decides she is the Lady of Imladris now that Celebrian is West, and she is going to make sure Rivendell remains the last refuge in the world if the worst comes to pass, like Galadriel does and like Melian once did

Elrond can proceed to spend the rest of the war focusing on ensuring Rivendell is protected and doing the thing canon seems to imply he does, which is to try and guess ahead of time what will be needed and provide that - the day to day matters which were his responsibility during peacetime are all seamlessly claimed by Arwen

By the time she marries, Arwen has effectively been running Rivendell for like 3 years (or 10 depending on which timeline you favor), so she technically has more experience with ruling than Aragorn does? She's just objectively a skilled queen, what can I tell you

So, I fell down a rabbit hole and learned two cool things in relation to the Irish language and Tolkien!

1) He seems to have tried and failed to learn Irish and thought it sounded awful XD

2) In one of his letters where he’s talking about the origin of the word nazg (Black Speech for ring), he says that he thinks it most likely came from nasc, which in modern Irish refers to a tie/bond/link and in older Irish seems to have also referred to ring-shaped jewellery (by which I mean bracelets, necklaces etc, not just finger rings). Technically, he does say that he didn’t do this consciously. He was looking up some stuff about Irish, came across the word and ‘re-learned’ it as such and thought “oop, that’s probably where that came from!” but I still think it’s cool.

Bonus! In that same letter, he describes the Irish language as “mushy” sounding and like, I get what he means? I don’t know why, but I find this description hilarious. He’s not wrong XD

[ID: screenshot of a tag by tolkien-feels that says, "eol about maeglin".

End ID.]

my beautiful infant son Untitled Document

“Keep descriptions short and don’t use poetic/flowery language in a novel” “if a scene doesn’t advance the plot cut it” “avoid complicated symbolism and hinting at things, just say what you mean” “too much worldbuilding is distracting” bites you bites you bites you bites you bites y

thinking about how the act of bringing someone back from the dead comes from a desire not just to bring back the dead person but to have things return to the way they were before they died. which is, of course, impossible. if a haunting is an open wound, then resurrection is a knife widening the cut.

thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes

reasons for this:

basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.

like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.

here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.

TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.

Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”

all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that

I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.

But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.

In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.

On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”

like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not

people who live in areas where there are native lizards should never take that for granted. you can just go outside and see a little guy hanging out. what’s better than that?

Hiya ! For the art thing (if I'm not too late !) how about Sokka in 6 and 8? ^_^

not gona lie, this pained me a tiny bit to clour it because these colour are compleatly out of my comfort zone. liek so bright so nearly neon? but it was fun! look at this sleep cozy boy!

uhm... i had only 4 slots open so i am sorry for the one i couldn't do. maybe an other time! --- art - blog: @chiptrillino-art

[ID: Sokka from Avatar the Last Airbender, drawn from the chest up, curled up in a blanket. he is facing the viewer smiling with his eyes closed seeming sleepy. his arms are fisting the edge of a blanket he is wearing like a hood, resting on a table. on the left side on the border of the image above is a text saying "please don't repost" on the right side is a small yellow emoticon showing an expression and 6 circles filled with shades of yellow, orange and purple that are the reference for the drawing challenge. on the left side border of the image centre is the artist's signature "chiptrillino . 2022" End ID.]