âIf you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, itâs my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.â
â J.R.R. Tolkien
NASA
I'd rather be in outer space đž
todays bird
Three Goblin Art
will byers stan first human second
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
đȘŒ

Love Begins

#extradirty

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noise dept.
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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romaâ

oozey mess

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let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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@heiressofearendil
âIf you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, itâs my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.â
â J.R.R. Tolkien
âAnd briefly though Elrond spoke, the sun rode up the sky and the morning was passing ere he ceasedâ
I think this is such a great example of âshow not tellâ. I also love that Tolkien conveys that this is the short version of the story and shows the passage of time during this.
My New Yearâs resolution is to become a piece of lint. I will not be elaborating at this time.
If they were gonna insert a female character into the Hobbit films that wasn't in the book it should have been Dis and no one can change my mind about this
My copy of The Fellowship that Iâve been reading has disappeared??? I took it out of my bag cause I was switching bags and now I canât find it???
Now I have nothing to read at work cause I forgot to grab another book.
This is a tragedy.
Please send your thoughts and prayers.
Itâs okay guys turns out I just put it somewhere weird
someone: lotr
me: rants for 5 hours
My copy of The Fellowship that Iâve been reading has disappeared??? I took it out of my bag cause I was switching bags and now I canât find it???
Now I have nothing to read at work cause I forgot to grab another book.
This is a tragedy.
Please send your thoughts and prayers.
Someone asked me to expand a little on a topic that was buried down in a big chain of reblogs, so I'm doing that here--it's about the use of the archaic "thee", "thou", "thy", etc. in LOTR and what it tells you about charactersâ feelings for one another. (I am NOT an expert on this, so it's just what I've picked up over time!)
Like many (most?) modern English speakers, I grew up thinking of those old forms of 2nd person address as being extra formal. I think that's because my main exposure to them was in the Bible ("thou shall not...") and why wouldn't god, speaking as the ultimate authority, be using the most formal, official voice? But it turns out that for a huge chunk of the history of the English language, "thee," "thou," and "thy" were actually the informal/casual alternatives to the formal "you", âyourâ, âyoursâ. Like tĂș v. usted in Spanish!
With that in mind, Tolkien was very intentional about when he peppered in a "thee" or a "thou" in his dialogue. It only happens a handful of times. Most of those are when a jerk is trying to make clear that someone else is beneath them by treating them informally. Denethor "thou"s Gandalf when heâs pissed at him. The Witch King calls Ăowyn "thee" to cut her down verbally before he cuts her down physically. And the Mouth of Sauron calls Aragorn and Gandalf "thou" as a way to show them that he has the upper hand. (Big oops by all 3 of these guys!)
The other times are the opposite--it's when someone starts to use the informal/casual form as a way to show their feeling of affection for someone else. Galadriel goes with the formal "you" all through the company's days in LĂłrien, but by the time they leave she has really taken them to heart. So when she sends them a message via Gandalf early in the Two Towers, she uses "thee" and "thou" in her words to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli because now they're valued friends and allies. And--this is the big one, folks, that was already alluded to in my previous post--Ăowyn starts aggressively "thou"ing Aragorn when she is begging him to take her along as he prepares to ride out of Dunharrow. She is very intentionally trying to communicate her feelings to him in her choice of pronoun--an "I wouldn't be calling you "thee" if I didn't love you" kind of thing. And he is just as intentionally using "you" in every single one of his responses in order to gently establish a boundary with her without having to state outright that he doesn't reciprocate her feelings. It's not until much later when her engagement to Faramir is announced that Aragorn finally busts out "I have wished thee joy ever since I first saw thee". Because now it is safe to acknowledge a relationship of closeness and familiarity with her without the risk that it will be misinterpreted. He absolutely wants to have that close, familiar relationship, but he saved it for when he knew she could accept it on his terms without getting hurt.
So, you know, like all things language-based...Tolkien made very purposeful decisions in his word choices down to a bonkers level of detail. I didnât know about this pronoun thing until I was a whole ass adult, but thatâs the joy of dealing with Tolkien. I still discover new things like this almost every time I re-read.
Went through another rewatch of the LotR movies recently and Iâm just so in awe of them every time. I donât think we will see a masterpiece like them again.
The portrayal of friendship and love gets me every time. As I get older I find more and more depth to be found in the movies.
I always appreciate that Tolkien takes the time to tell us what happened to the horses and ponies that got scared off in Bree.
There is nothing worse than finding out youâve been pronouncing a characters name wrong the whole time
Tolkienâs canon supports a racially diverse portrayal of Middle-earth
Iâm tired of people complaining about diversity in depictions of Tolkienâs work, and Iâm tired of these people calling themselves âTolkien puristsâ, as if they have canon on their side. They donât.Â
People who are actually Tolkien purists: have strong feelings about what the LOTR movies changed and omitted from the books; can quote the source material with scary levels of accuracy; have extremely strong opinions on obscure topics; probably taught themselves how to read tengwar⊠things like that.
People who are not Tolkien purists, and should never be called Tolkien purists: anyone arguing that all of Tolkienâs characters have to be portrayed by white people.
To start off with, most people already know that some characters in Tolkienâs works, like the Haradrim, are coded as people of color. But theyâre generally unnamed antagonists and they appear in the story briefly. I want to talk about whether or not there are people of color among Middle-earthâs protagonists. And the answer is yes.Â
So-called âTolkien puristsâ often dismiss the idea that people of color exist in Middle-earth because, they argue, itâs a sort of âfantasy Europe.â The problem with this argument is that Europe has never been 100% white. So, this line of faulty reasoning can be ignored completely.
Second, Tolkien never stated that all of his heroes were white. Some of them, for example some of the hobbits, are described as having brown skin, which could apply to people of a variety of ethnicities. Others, such as the Elves, are described in ambiguous ways that could also describe people of various ethnicities. Other characters have no visual descriptions at all. People who think that all of Tolkienâs heroes must be white donât actually have any grounds to prove it, and it reveals a lot more about them than it does about LOTR.
Third, people dismiss the idea that people of color exist in Middle-earth because, they argue, Tolkien based his stories on Northern European myths and culturesâand he did, although they should refer back to my first point: Europe has never been 100% white. But if youâre one of those people who says, âThere canât be people of color in Middle-earth, because Tolkien based his stories on myths from Northern Europe, and wanted to write a mythology for England!â then youâve just revealed that you actually know very little about Tolkienâs worldbuilding.
Because, yes, Tolkien did draw inspiration from many Northern European myths, cultures, and languages, but he had other inspirations as well. According to one of his maps, Tolkien envisioned Gondor lying at about the latitude of Italy. Do you really think thereâs no one of African or Middle-eastern descent in Italy? And thatâs just the beginning. Tolkien also based the crown of Gondor on the crown of the Pharaohs of Egypt, and likened its architecture to Egyptian architectureâthat means Gondor canonically takes aesthetic and cultural inspiration from an African kingdom. In a letter, Tolkien also identified Minas Tirith with the Byzantine Empire, which at one time included parts of modern-day Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Crimea, Turkey, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syriaâif I havenât missed any. He also drew inspiration for AdĂ»naic and Khuzdul from Hebrew.Â
You canât have it both ways: if you believe that Tolkienâs inspiration from Northern European myths, cultures, and languages means his characters have to be white, then you are forced to concede that if he also drew inspiration from North African and Middle-eastern civilizations, cultures, and languages, then some of his characters have to be people of color, too. You canât use canon to prove that all of Tolkienâs protagonists were white, because he never said they were, and if you do some research, youâll just find more and more evidence that actually fully supports a diverse Middle-earth. There is an undeniable influence on Tolkienâs worldbuilding from places outside of Northern Europe, and all of this would suggest that he envisioned at least some of his protagonists to be North African and Middle-eastern. Not only that, but people move around; the Byzantine Empire traded with China and India, and was most likely full of people from all over the place.Â
I want to add that, although this post was sparked by the discussion going on about The Rings of Power, donât mistake this for a gesture of support for the show. While Iâm strongly in favor of more diversity in portrayals of Middle-earth, Amazon systematically discriminates against people of color and has sold racist material on their website for years, so they shouldnât receive praise for doing the bare minimum to create a diverse cast. Theyâre selling the aesthetic of diversity in a fantasy world while remaining hostile to it in reality.
And Iâve said a lot about Amazon elsewhere, but the main point of this post is that people have no right to call themselves Tolkien purists if they think all the heroes of his stories have to be white. I will also note that so-called Tolkien purists are up in arms over the very idea of a Black Elf, but they donât seem very concerned with Amazonâs significant changes to Tolkienâs actual storiesâcompressing the timeline of the Second Age, for instance, which is an extreme departure from canon. Anyone whoâs more upset about people of color playing Elves and Dwarves than they are about changes to actual canon is not a Tolkien purist at all, and they donât know very much about the canon they claim to respect.
As a final addition, I donât think readers need permission from the source material to interpret the characters the way they want to. If you want to draw Tolkienâs characters as people of color, you donât need to write a dissertation with footnotes proving that itâs exactly what he intended. But I do see a lot of people creating diverse fan art and saying, basically, âI donât care if this contradicts canon!ââand thereâs nothing wrong with that approach, but are you sure it contradicts canon? Or is canon actually quite vague and open to interpretation when it comes to charactersâ ethnicities? Itâs important for Tolkien fans to remember that the actual source material here is way more friendly to these interpretations than a lot of people believe, and we need to reject the exclusionist rhetoric of the so-called âpuristsâ who think canon is on their side when they claim that Middle-earth is exclusively white. Theyâre wrong. Canon is not on their side.
yearning for middle earth the way elves yearn for the sea......... that nostalgic longing for a place you've never known and yet in your very soul you know it feels like home.......
It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of IlĂșvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.
(source, 11/30/22)
KING
Am I able to ask tumblr to show me less âin your orbitâ posts? Especially in my following feed? I feel like thatâs all thats in my following feed and itâs so freakin annoying cause it seems like those are getting pushed into my feed more than the people I freakin follow which I feel defeats the whole purpose of a following feed