kinda dead but not really

probably just a low-key tolkien shitpost blog | main: @polskipolikarp

[manicpixiedckgirl]

[theaudientvoid]

There are multiple chapters that are set in hospitals where the characters are attempting to recover from injuries that never fully heal. I must once again stress that my experience in WWI was perfectly normal.

[aro-ace-from-outer-space22]

There is a giant horrible mudplain full of unrecoverable and perfectly preserved dead bodies that the characters have to walk through in a land where the air is poisoned gas, and on a compLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: WWI WAS TOTALLY FINE AND NORMAL!!

[thefakebernadettebanner]

Happy 20th anniversary to They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard specifically

[tournamentpollsinc]

Semifinals

Doomed By the Narrative

Turin Turambar VS Boromir

Turin Turambar

Boromir

Voting ended onMar 19

[twofoursixohjuan]

[lir72]

Made a Sir Nighteye animatic for the 3 living Sir Nighteye fans. It took me a whole week (⁠+⁠_⁠+⁠) Hope it's worth it ngl

[earendil-was-a-mariner]

Bilbo’s greatest quote

The Hobbit is, at its heart, about Bilbo Baggin’s transformation from someone who is purely a Baggins to someone who is both a Baggins and a Took. As he adventures with the dwarves he becomes more and more Took (largely eclipsing his Baggins side though that never wholly leaves him), until near the end of his story he reaches a peaceful equilibrium - he retires back to the Shire, but remains “Mad Baggins,” and is more eccentric and worldly than ever. Near the end of the book, there is a single sentence than captures this best. 

“If ever you are passing my way,” said Bilbo, “don’t wait to knock! Tea is at four; but any of you are welcome at any time!”

Bilbo’s adventure began with an unexpected party. And he is ending it, saying that he’s still going to be living in that same, comfortable Hobbit hole. He will still be drinking tea at four. He’s not off on any more quests. But now he’s welcoming to visitors, and travelers, and their stories. He is still a Baggins. But he is at peace with his Took side, as well. 

[tanoraqui]

Merry Brandybuck would’ve fucking loved Excel spreadsheets.

[tanoraqui]

Pippin meanwhile is two hours and 17 tangentially related pages deep into a Wikipedia dive, for the third time this week.

[tanoraqui]

Frodo is editing Wikipedia. He’s the one who teaches Pippin about the joy—and strict requirement—of citing original and/or reliable sources.

[tanoraqui]

iNaturalist user SamGardener is an MVP of identifying flowers, grasses, and herbs, and adding little notes suggesting how to use them in cooking. His accuracy record for Shire-local plants is matched only by Strider2931, whose record is perfect in nearly every category and biome and the popular is that he’s an AI.

[myriadhallauglokadis]

Haleth, upon seeing Caranthir naked for the first time: similar enough, it'll work.

Caranthir: what do you... how would you know...?

Haleth, frowning: how would I...? do you know how old I am?

Caranthir:

Haleth:

Haleth: wait, does that mean you haven't...?

Caranthir, indignant: of course not, we only wed once!

Haleth:... ... WED?!?

Caranthir, suddenly nervous: perhaps we should talk more...

Haleth: later perhaps. First, I need to wed you.

[seirxi]

watched episodes 4-7 of BNHA. These doodles got away from me…

Thoughts so far: Izuku’s self destructive tendencies being encouraged by All Might is wild, Aizawa is hot, Bakugou getting angry over nothing is so funny, Izuku’s mom is cute

[lexa-utek]

People discovering mha warms my heart 💔 what I'd give to watch it for the first time again

[now-for-wrath-now-for-ruin]

Please I beg of you, more boromir in his Byzantine dress!!!! Or just at least the one you did as a separate piece so I can use him as my phone background please and thank you I love him so much

Your art literally changed how I view Boromir in my own fanfiction, and the scope of the world away from Peter Jackson’s visage, which has helped me cement a lot of characteristics about him/the world. Like 🫶🏻😩 please please pretty please

Thank you so much!! I'm honestly so honoured that my art had some impact on your fanfic???? I'm so happy you enjoyed his design and gained something valuable out of it!!

Since I wanted to make some adjustments to Boromir's outfit anyway (and do it fully since the cloak was covering it so much in the first one), I made a full body version of him in it!

[zevampirex]

The three of them give me so much camping vibe, and my head canon is to imagine Gimli and Aragorn trying to explain games to Legolas, but he is the worst at it.

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[anghraine]

Additional thought: it's not that this makes our heroes terrible for opposing them. The orcs are part of an imperialist war machine that their enemies are defending themselves against. OTOH the fact that orcs definitionally do not have a way out despite being ordinary people, and know this, and resent it, and want another kind of life, does feel tragic on some level.

It also feels significant that LOTR the book is particularly adamant on the point that acts that are broadly evil or wrong cannot be justified by who your target is or how noble the overall cause is. That's what the Ring is about, thematically—when Boromir says that good men can use the Ring for good ends and remain uncorrupted, he's fooling himself (with the able assistance of the Ring). It's one thing to defend your life and home for real, it's another to use that as a pretext for things that are simply wrong. It's not about finding the "right" target so you can feel just about doing something fundamentally unethical.

When Faramir says he would not lie to an orc, that's basically what he's saying. In his world, orcs are hostile, dangerous, ancestral and current enemies throughout thousands of years of history continuing right into the present moment and serving an existential foe. He doesn't know that some of them dislike Sauron and want to escape. But even an orc can't be justifiably lied to in his worldview, because he believes it's wrong to lie to any person. No matter how evil that person or their deeds, their actions cannot justify wrongdoing on his end.

For similar reasons, Aragorn isn't going to kill the Mouth of Sauron. He psychically challenges the Mouth (another Númenórean in the book), but actual violence against an ambassador, even a super evil sorcerous ambassador of Sauron, is simply wrong in the code that someone like Aragorn lives by. He can't just decide the Mouth is an un-person because he's a terrible person and justify a war crime.

I'm not arguing that Aragorn and Faramir have identical codes of behavior or that all heroic characters in Tolkien do (if you've followed me for long, you'll know this is very much not my opinion). But the larger idea here is that evil deeds cannot be made good ones by finding the right person to commit them against, and this encompasses the Mouth, this encompasses the human soldiers on Team Sauron that Sam pities, this encompasses orcs, this encompasses every single person. This was very much Tolkien's RL position on the atomic bombs in WWII, it's a whole thing.

And the inclusion of the orcs in this, awful as they invariably seem to be, defines them as people.

(This is not a full-throated endorsement of how Tolkien handles the orcs, btw! But I think it's important to the basic themes of the story that unethical acts cannot be converted to ethical ones by the character of your target. The orcs in LOTR are invading soldiers of conquest who pose direct and brutal threats to other people's lives, homes, and autonomy. Those other people have the moral right to defend themselves, but it doesn't give them total latitude to just do whatever to orcs or anyone else.)

[anghraine]

#very good analysis (via @draquus)

Thank you very much!

[butter-n-breadrolls]

the other elves welcoming Legolas in Valinor

[cuprumbao]

resting

[idontknowhowtoplayguitar]

Lotr headcanon, having lots of patches on your clothes is fashionable in the Shire. The more patches, the cooler you are. Especially if it's a lot of different fabrics. It's common to trade patches with friends and family, and it's usually treated with high sentimental value. It's like carrying a piece of someone with you.

While the hobbits are on the quest, their clothes get holes and such. This leads Sam and Frodo to nab small things from the other members of the fellowship, like handkerchiefs or anything too worn for use, to use as patches. Merry and Pippin aren't so courteous, and cut pieces from the fellowship's clothes while they sleep.

Of course, the hobbits exchange patches amongst themselves while traveling, and they never go anywhere without a needle and some thread. Sam is the best at sewing. Pippin is not allowed around needles.

Boromir notices this, thinks it's adorable, and leaves things out purposely for the hobbits to use. Eventually, he asks about it, and they convince him to do the patches, too.

Aragorn also notices and thinks it's adorable, but doesn't bring it up to them. He's secretly flattered to find pieces of his rag on Frodo's pants. He asks Boromir about it instead.

Legolas doesn't notice. His clothes are elven-made, and the scissors refuse to cut it.

Gimli notices the random holes in his clothes, and the things going missing, but doesn't realize it's the hobbits. He brings it up to Legolas, who immediately convinces Gimli that he's crazy and it's all in his head.

Gandalf notices, obviously, and he doesn't mind until Pippin tries to cut his cloak while hes asleep. He proceeds to wake up and yell at him until dawn.

After Boromir dies, Aragorn takes his cloak, and sews pieces onto his clothes. These are the only patches he has.

Bilbo has a set of clothes with patches from the dwarves, from his own adventure. He told them about the tradition, and they all gave him pieces of fabric to use. He can still recount which patch belonged to who.

[pipis-took]

I got permission to draw @eedlitamm’s wonderful idea of Lord of the rings characters as Disney style animals, which are listed and described in this post, please go and check it out it’s amazing✨✨✨

Thanks again @eedlitamm for letting me draw your wonderful idea! I might do all characters in a different post later on! This was so so fun!!!

[chechula]

next part of my Tolkien landscapes serie that I‘m drawing every inktober ! this years for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ♥

previous years: Hobbit The Fellowship of the Ring  The Two Towers

[gaitiem]