My Sister Said To Me That She Doesn’t Think Azula Would’ve Killed Aang If Not To Bring Zuko Home,

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

Turin and Beleg meeting again at the end of the world

For Feanorian week, Miriel Serinde, in whose arms began the burning history of Noldor.

You ever think about unimaginably far back in the past the event of the First Age are compared to LOTR. Just. By LOTR Gondor is more than 3000 years old. For us 3000 years ago is… It’s not just before the Roman Empire, it’s before Rome even existed. It’s back before Ancient Greece as we usually mean it was a thing. Tutankhamun ruled around 3300 years ago. Numenor is to Gondor what ancient Egypt is to us. And the founding of Numenor was more than 6000 years prior. That’s older than the first recorded examples of a writing system we have

Imagine being a scholar in Gondor and being able to read a diary that was written by someone in Numenor. Imagine reading a 5000 years old letter written by a Numenorean, and not like a transaction receipt or something of the sorts, not something written for functionality when written language was just invented, but something already fully fleshed out and nuanced. Imagine being told that out there the brother of the first king of Numenor is still alive and he could tell you all about him. That’s like if you could just stroll to a Sumerian and ask them what Uruk was like back in the day. If I was Boromir I would have died on the spot meeting Elrond

And like maybe the scholars would have enough documents and proof to say yes, Numenor existed, Elros existed too, but the common people? What would a fisherman or farmer said if you told them about it? The tale about the son of a star who ruled a star-shaped island, and of the star-shaped island who was sunk in the sea after the old kings became evil, that would absolutely be seen as a legend. There’s gotta be plenty of Gondorians who think Numenor was just a tale, a metaphor, that there’s no way the stories are true, and they’d be right to think that because it’s such a wild tale and from so long ago that it just sounds like someone made it up at some point

Picture ID for visually impaired people are genuinely good and should be normalized, however we should keep in mind people born blind don't have a single idea what a color is and it's most of the visual ID I've read

Cartographic Practices of Arda: Men

[overthinking fantasy cartography series: Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men]

o   Men might seem like the most straightforward group to analyze, but they’re not. Why should we assume that humans in Arda use the same cartographic practices that we do? For that matter, who is “we”? Cartography is not a set of objective and universally or historically standard techniques; it is not an exact science; the modern maps treated as real or correct maps are not the one true way to represent space. Tolkien’s Edain may be based on Western Europeans, but they’re still fantasy, and there’s no reason that their cartography should look like Western Europe’s

Further, Western European cartography wasn’t standardized in terms of techniques or even units of measure until early states began to want visual representations of their territory that would make them more easily taxed and managed, especially as enclosure policies took off, market forces became increasingly dominant, and controlling a standardized populace became an important goal of government

o    Western cartography is also deeply intertwined with maps as a colonial and imperialist tool, which impacted the development of mapping practices, the lands those maps reflected, and the ways in which space was imagined. I think that governing, planning military operations, maybe taxing the populace, and carrying out various expansionist programs would be the activities in Middle-earth driving cartographic development among Men, similar to Europe, but it’s not inevitable at all that the maps they make for such things would look the same. Maybe they could make maps of layered symbols rather than mimicking on-the-ground spatial relations, or paintings whose details correspond to geographic referents, or physical models of space a la Polynesian stick charts (although I do think there’s an artifacts-have-politics argument to be made about which cartographic practices are most conducive to certain uses and conceptions of space, but I digress)

o   But presuming Men do make maps in the same vein as those found in the books (though I should say I don’t take those as being real in-world maps, per se), what would they map? And how would they map it?

Starting with the Edain and the kingdoms they founded, since their influence is so centered in LOTR, I think their cartography would develop as a formal practice in Númenor, and prior to that, they might use the maps of Elven realms of which they were vassals, or might create their own spatial navigation techniques, not necessarily cartographic

Likely, considerable influence of Elvish cartography on Númenórean maps would carry over to Gondor and Arnor. While Elves might only need maps as reference for memorization, or for military strategy planning, I think Men’s reproduction of and reliance on maps would increase greatly, especially during the colonial age of Númenor and the realms they established. Cartography could become a more established discipline; populations could be managed more effectively, at least under the more competent rulers; similar to early-state-formation Europe, you could see cartography as an increasingly important tool of state 

(this is a long one, so the rest is under the cut)

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Whenever I read LotR and reach the battle between Eowyn and the Witch-king, I get the impression that the reason why the prophecy loophole works isn’t that the Witch-king is unkillable except for some illogical weakness nobody had thought about yet for misogynistic reasons, but that the Witch-king himself derives so much of his power from the fear he instills in others and from his own belief that he is unkillable. Eowyn doesn’t fear him, because she doesn’t fear death. When she twists his words right back at him, she’s not trying to exploit a prophecy loophole, she’s just making a play on the double meaning of the word «man» with fairly standard battlefield bravado.

But, crucially, it gets the Witch-king wondering if there might be an actual loophole in the prophecy. He starts doubting his own invincibility. There’s no logical reason why a woman might be able to kill him if a man cannot, but prophecies are tricky things. What if …

And this is what undoes him, in the end. This last minute doubt. The Witch-king, deep down, believes that Eowyn can kill him, thus making it possible for her to do so.

I read this little fact in my King Island book and i don't see it come up in any other source and it really makes some other aspects of the culture make sense so i wanted to share:

In Inupiaq cultural tradition, men would fast when they hunted. They would get up at dawn, test the weather by standing barefoot near the entrance of the house, and if hunting was an option, they'd have a little water and no food before heading out. A man wouldn't eat anything that day until he got home in the evening

You know which bit of The Fall of Gondolin made me go really, truly feral? After Tuor and Voronwë see Túrin, without knowing who it is (my heart), we get this:

The cries of the hunters grew fainter; for the Orcs thrust never deep into the wild lands at either hand, but swept rather down and up the road. They recked little of stray fugitives, but spies they feared and the scouts of armed foes; for Morgoth had set a guard on the highway, not to ensnare Tuor and Voronwë (of whom as yet he knew nothing) nor any coming from the West, but to watch for the Blacksword, lest he should escape and pursue the captives of Nargothrond, bringing help, it might be, out of Doriath.

Part of the reason that they manage to cross the Vale of Sirion (apart from the cloak of Ulmo) is that Morgoth is so concerned with keeping a watch out for Túrin that his scouts keep to the road, and aren’t bothered about pursuing two “stray fugitives” come out of the west into the wilds beyond. He is so preoccupied with Túrin that Tuor slips right through his fingers.

Without ever knowing it, Túrin helps Tuor to reach Gondolin, to deliver Ulmo’s message, to marry Idril and father Eärendil, putting in motion Morgoth’s own downfall. Cursed as he is, he is still able to play his own part in bringing that about, and all without ever knowing it. And that gets me right in the heart.

*adds another neurodivergent label to my bio as if I'm adding stickers to a laptop*