penelopes-poppies

Latest Posts by penelopes-poppies

Nerd Rage, general hatred of Amazon, and, yes, a certain degree of racism are surely aspects of it for some people, but I think that the backlash against the "Rings of Power" is more prosaic than any of this.

What I think that it boils down to is that "Lord of the Rings" was made with love. Tolkien was certainly not writing it to make huge amounts of money off of it, he did it out of love; the generations of children who grew up RPing Elves and drawing detailed maps of Osgiliath and somehow forcing their way through the text of the Silmarillion were acting out if love; even, yes, the Peter Jackson movies, which were absolutely capitalist enterprises from top to bottom, would not have been what they were without the love of the people working on them.

And then along comes Amazon, for whom this obsession, this passion, this love is just a market segment. Amazon, the economic equivalent of a malignant brain tumour, to which all things are always and only IP to be consumed. And they show complete disregard for the original text, because they just don't care. To them, it's an aesthetic. Something they can market to fans of Game of Thrones or the Witcher. A centrepiece for their own forays into streaming.

So that's the basis for the pushback. It's not because Galadriel has the wrong heraldry or because the Dwarven women are beardless. It is the revolt of culture against being puréed, processed, and packaged into #Content

One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal. 

By the way! BBC Merlin, in its ongoing quest to achieve ren faire levels of historical accuracy, used Actual Old English as the magic spell language. They got a professor to do a lot of the translations, though they didn't spend much effort on the pronunciation.

There are two ways that this is very funny if you watch the show while knowing OE. One is that usually when they do the "wave your hands to smash your enemies around" type spells they're literally saying very simple stuff like "jump back" and "fall." The other is that whenever they have a long incantation to read, they say vaguely related stuff for a sentence or so and then just transition into reciting Beowulf.

[I. D.: a tweet by KeithPille.bsky.social on July 16, 2024 reading, “Worth thinking about how long Tolkien goes on in Return of the King about despair being a weapon, and presenting defeat as a forgone conclusion being a deliberate and effective tactic”]

not even JRR Tolkien, who famously developed the concept of the Secondary World and firmly believed that no trace of the Real World should be evoked in the fictional world, was able to remove potatoes from his literature. this is a man who developed whole languages and mythologies for his literary world, who justified its existence in English as a translation* simply because he was so miffed he couldn't get away with making the story fully alien to the real world. and not even he, in extremis, was so cruel as to deny his characters the heavenly potato. could not even conceive a universe devoid of the potato. such is its impact. everyone please take a moment to say thank you to South Americans for developing and cultivating one of earth's finest vegetables. the potato IS all that. literally world-changing food. bless.

Celebrimbor: So here are my designs for the gates.

Narvi: Darling, I asked for a riddle, not a dumb pun; you can’t put the password directly on the doors, that’s not safe!

Much later

Gandalf: *Spends hours trying to find the password to the Gates of Moria*

Celebrimbor: *Watching from the Halls of Mandos* VINDICATION!!!

Surviving under late stage capitalism is hard, especially when you’re out of spoons and you’re lucky if you have a plastic knife. We’re here to help. 

The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food You Can Make So You Don’t Die is a community-built, vegetarian/vegan guide to getting food in your facehole when you’re suffering from depression. Or other mental illnesses or physical illnesses or *waves hand generally at the state of the world* anything else. 

We’ve made it free on our website because life sucks enough without having to give Jeff Bezos money, but we also do have a paperback copy available for sale over there too, since we also need to eat.

https://nightbeatseu.ca/the-sad-bastard-cookbook/

reasons not to put image descriptions under readmores

it puts a burden on disabled people to click through to people’s individual blogs in order to have access, instead of browsing their dash like sighted people do

hyperlinks and screen readers don’t always get along, so readmores can actually be more difficult for people using screen readers to access

if you ever change your url or delete your blog, that image is rendered inaccessible

it’s annoying

don’t do it

“nothing much dog, what’s up with you?”

-with new group members comes more opportunities-

+bonus

I did some more fantasy archery trope testing. This time the arrow stabby thing!

Too much praying directly to the Valar and not enough praying to their Maiar for their intercession

Establish dominance by declaring an Elf a “Man-friend” before they declare you an “Elf-friend”

Just got the most valid bookmark comment on Salvage:

Bookmarked by Misty_Silva_Moon, 11 Jan 2023

Tf w the kids don’t like the feral raccoon that u adopted from a dumpster

ID: Katara and sokka in swimgear. in the first image, sokka is searching for something in the water. his hair getting wet. katara leans over to him saying "don't you think, its time for a haircut?" in the second image sokka rose form the water, a dog-shark creature in hand, swinging his hair in Katara face splashing her. smugly he says "no <3". End ID

i know its winter! i know it likley snowed by now on the northern hemilsphere! but... on the southern side is summer time right??? so... its fine.... this is fine!!!

----

!!! please do not use or repost this artwork without permission!!!

You know those edits that are like "(fandom) + Greek words for love" usually being Eros, Ludus, Storge, Mania, Pragma, Philia and Agape?

Why oh why has no one done an edit that is like "Sons of Feanor + completely fucked up ideas about love"? I feel like this could be done

Fëanor: I put the “war” in “Tengwar”

Curufin: I put the “goth” in “Nargothrond”

Elros: I put the “men” in “Numenor”

Galadriel: I put a frog in Fingolfin’s boot once. They don’t even know it was me

"Elrond raised his eyes and looked at him, and Frodo felt his heart pierced by the sudden keenness of the glance." - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Council of Elrond.

So. What do you want to bet that when glorfindel came back to middle earth he had a heart attack because elrond looked like maeglin.

(This means that the list of people glorfindel has considered trying to murder about this exact topic is elrond, bilbo, and aragorn. Plus a bunch of elrond's other human fosters but none of THEM fell for arwen so aragorn was def the most severe)

And since arwen is exactly like elrond in every way, this is yet more proof for my theory of "every character named twilight + son/daughter is a meaningful parallel"

It is told that Curufinwë son of Curufinwë crafted for his brother a magnificent limb of metal to replace that which Fingon their cousin had rent in order to save him. Yet no lesser was the second of his cunning prosthetics: a palantír, small enough to be held between two fingers, a Stone to See by which Maedhros took and used for his own. For while one of his once-sharp eyes, now filmed milky white, lay still whole in its socket, its match had been destroyed and its place was sunken and empty.

Thus so did Curufinwë build his lord anew.

[img desc below cut]

Keep reading

Before any Finwean family dinner can commence, all seatinging arrangements must be approved by the Councle of Eldest Sons (Maedhros, Fingon, and Finrod). This is a really serious matter of safety. Without them the rate of kinslaying among the Noldor could easily have tripled what it was.

[ID: two keychains, one with Maedhros hanging from his wrist as on Thangorodrim and the other with a determined-looking Fingon climbing up with a bow and harp to rescue him.

End ID.]

guess what i had made!!! this is the second sample i got, i’m much happier with the colors and the overall quality :’) these guys are double-sided, the back side is… their backs lol. in any case!! i have 2 sets that i don’t want to keep, so i’ll host a little giveaway! reblog to enter (note in your tags if you don’t want to be considered) and i’ll draw names on dec 1!

people are cowards about fantasy settings and not including some things in em. I get the aversion to not wanting too modern of tech, however dwarves would invent and fucking love metal folding chairs

new headcanon unlocked: Melkor killing by accident one of estë’s rabbits, trying to bring it back to life and accidentally creating a platypus

spending $10 of my hard earned money so i can shove my favorite pic of my cat onto ur dash

“Long before, in the bliss of Valinor, before Melkor was unchained, or lies came between them, Fingon had been close in friendship with Maedhros.” 

Okay honestly I am fascinated by this line and I feel like it doesn’t get touched on much in fanon. The implication here (”lies came between them”) seems to be that whatever friendship Maedhros and Fingon had was already deteriorated to some degree by the time of the Flight of the Noldor, that they had begun to mistrust and be in opposition to each other which in a way, makes Maedhros’ apparent betrayal in Alqualonde/Losgar worse for Fingon–it may feel like the nail in the coffin to a friendship that was already on ice. It also makes it potentially more powerful for Maedhros that Fingon comes for him anyway, in spite of everything that had broken between them.

It also sets up a more awkward dynamic going forward in Beleriand. These are not necessarily two bosom friends reunited after a single misunderstanding. Clearly this relationship had issues before the Exile and while Fingon’s rescue of Maedhros was a grand gesture (although far from lacking in political considerations) recovering trust from someone you’ve lost it with is not easy, especially if they don’t yet realize the hand Melkor played in what went down in Aman.

It would also be fascinating to examine a more contentious and possibly even competitive dynamic between Fingon and Maedhros in Tirion, as their friendship goes downhill and they begin to mistrust each other as Melkor works the knife in between Feanor and Fingolfin. Which makes Fingon’s kingship in Beleriand even more interesting, particularly in light of the fact that by the Maedhros Rule (rule by the oldest/most experienced of the royal family), he could make a second bid for the crown, and Fingon has to be aware of that.

There just seems to be a lot of room for exploring a more complicated friendship between these two and how that affects them going forward.

Thinking about a re-embodied Maeglin looking up at the night sky and realising that it contains a star he never saw before he died. And one day he asks about it and hears how it's Eärendil and how he ended up up there

it’s sad how many FAKE FANS out there havent read the silmarillion 2 

[ID of final image: screen cap of a nun with the subtitles "Please, please, do not come crying to me."

End ID.]