One ring to rule them all. @justmysummerwine - Tumblr Blog

hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS

parkayquarts

somewhere out there is a guy who meticulously takes screenshots of every individual frame of his favorite tv shows and then painstakingly etches each one onto a roll of film which he puts into his old timey projector and recreates the footage as a silent film with his own lavishly hand-lettered dialogue cards and original score that he plays on his upright piano and charges audiences one shiny penny a play. at last, big media has finally outsmarted ol' Zachary Zoetrope

theheroheart

PSA for everyone who doesn't know, explained simply

this is NOT because of blocking screenshots, it's because of HOW streaming sites use your computer's hardware to optimise performance, which means the thing rendering the video and the thing capturing your screen aren't the SAME thing. so they can't talk together.

you can fix this by going to your browser settings, searching for "hardware acceleration", and turning that off.

team-thickness12

This also fixes screen sharing to other screens. It has been GODSEND

lucarleigho

type this in the toolbar to find this setting in firefox: about:preferences#searchResults

mctreeleth

ol' Zachary Zoetrope is back in business!

draconym

i would rather see the information for an event handwritten in sharpie on a paper towel than see another AI generated flyer

aj-living-life

Saving this post to show my boss who I told the AI flier makes us look lazy and ignorant, and offered to hand draw one. She still printed tons of ai fliers and I'm tempted to make a better one just because it annoys me so much.

aj-living-life

Fun update: event was canceled because literally nobody rsvp'd to the AI flier.

nariarts

Longtime readers may be aware of how much I relish an excuse to bully a company, so I'm sharing the wealth;

Clothing company Patagonia is currently sueing drag queen Pattie Gonia for "irreparable” harm to their brand.

To be clear; Pattie named herself after the region in South America.

So Pattie is asking people to politely ask Patagonia to drop the lawsuit.

I'm extending the invitation to all of you, because sueing a drag queen for 'infringement' in the current political cultural landscape is vile. Especially a drag queen who has raised millions of dollars for non-profits, uses her platform to raise awareness for climate activism, and fully aligns with Patagonia's apparent climate-conscious mission statement.

They're claiming they're sueing for $1. They're actually asking her to stop using her name, and pay over $1 million in legal fees. They're straight up harassing her.

In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen.

Anyway. Be respectful(ish), but feel free to be annoying on Patagnoia's socials, asking them to 'DROP THE LAWSUIT'

I think they have a twitter and tiktok too!

shadow-manor

This is being discussed heavily on Bluesky, such as here.

Patagonia is suing specifically for trademark infringement, and they're suing for the sum of $1. If they don't sue, then that means they could lose the trademark. They aren't trying to "silence" them or prevent them from using the name, they're specifically protecting their company trademark. They'd have to sue *anyone* who was using such an obvious knockoff of their logo; in this case it happens to be a drag queen.

batmanisagatewaydrug

you'll have to forgive me for not weeping for a billion dollar company's trademark being violated

shadow-manor

Go nuts. The point is that this isn't a company trying to dogpile on a drag queen, it's a company following a standard legal practice to protect its trademark. Disney does it all the time.

batmanisagatewaydrug

... yes, and I also hate Disney? I don't understand what you think you're selling me on here

shadow-manor

If you get a soda out of a vending machine and it has a Coca-Cola label but it's actually a knockoff made with ditchwater, that's obviously okay because Coca-Cola is a huge corporation and it's thus fine for someone to violate their trademark.

You can hate Patagonia all you want, but the lawsuit is about anodyne trademark law, not specifically that a drag queen is involved.

batmanisagatewaydrug

and what part of Miss Gonia's schtick is doing the harm equivalent of tricking someone into drinking ditchwater exactly?

shadow-manor

...the trademark part.

batmanisagatewaydrug

right, okay, I forgot that she's singlehandedly putting Patagonia out of business by using a silly joke name

netherator

if Patagonia loses their trademark, which they would if they didn't sue and win (again for one dollar), there would be no assurance against people putting a Patagonia label on amy dogshit

batmanisagatewaydrug

well I hope Amy Dogshit enjoys wearing the label I think she'll look very nice

kitsunekat9

Oh my fucking god y’all bootlickers are driving me crazy.

I’m a law student specializing in Intellectual Property, which includes Copyright and Trademark. I’ve studied these subjects and the law is clear that everything y’all said about Patagonia “losing the trademark” if they don’t sue Ms. Pattie is absolute bullshit.

Trademarks are only lost if they are abandoned by the user or if the product made by the company becomes so ubiquitous, everyday, and common that people start calling all types of that product by the trademark name. This is called genericide, because the trademark has become so generic, it is no longer an indicator of one singular source. Think Band-Aid or Thermos; we use those terms to refer to the generic products they’re associated with. We call pretty much all sticky bandages Band-Aids and all containers used to keep things warm in Thermoses.

What Patagonia is doing is actually closer to suing for trademark infringement based on tarnishment, which means the infringer is using the trademark name in a way that makes the company look bad or associates the company with things like drugs or pornography. Queen Pattie Gonia is someone who raises awareness for climate and environmental activism. Nothing about Miss Gonia’s use of the name tarnishes Patagonia’s brand.

The only possible argument the company has is that Miss Gonia’s queer identity could be seen as not “adult-friendly” but that very quickly slides into homophobic and moralistic territory that will absolutely be shot down by the court based on First Amendment rights. People are allowed to use “not safe for work names,” based on caselaw that states that “labels that are disparaging or morally offensive” are a violation of free speech because it’s people’s choice to say and use those names. For example, an all-Asian band applied for the trademark name “The Chinks” because they were taking the racially disparaging name and reclaiming it. The Trademark Office attempted to refuse to grant the band’s trademark, and when the band sued, the Supreme Court sided with the band.

That got off on a little bit of a tangent, but the long and short of it is this: Patagonia has absolutely no basis for a trademark name. Any IP lawyer would say the same. The reason Patagonia is getting away with a frivolous suit like this is because they know their target is a member of a vulnerable minority. Miss Gonia is 100% correct that they are trying to bully her because they know she doesn’t have the money to withstand a years-long expensive lawsuit.

It’s because of idiotic bootlickers who kiss companies’ asses like this that big corporations can get away with hurting independent creators. Patagonia does not have any chance at winning, but they know that just by filing and announcing their lawsuit against Miss Gonia, they are putting pressure on her to give up. If this lawsuit goes on, even if it doesn’t make it to court and just goes to a judge for a quick summary judgment, Miss Gonia would still have to pay for a lawyer to defend her and lawyers cost more money than the average person has. Miss Gonia would win, but because Patagonia set the damages for $1, even if she did win, she’d still end up in debt because in America, the typical rule is that each party pays for the cost of their own attorney’s fees. The only time the opposing side would pay your lawyer’s fees is if you have a contract with them that says so, and that’s usually only used in contracts between businesses or high profile individuals.

What Patagonia is doing is capitalizing on society’s hatred for queer people and anyone resembling a trans woman. Miss Gonia is a drag queen, not trans as far as I’m aware (though please do correct me if I’m wrong) but it’s not like a big company cares to differentiate; they’re just mad that a queer person is using their name in a way they don’t like. Patagonia knows that this particular population has been facing harsh discrimination in society currently. By siding with them, people are actively harming the queer community. Don’t pretend to hide behind trademark law to cover up your prejudices.

fostertheory

Thanks for the additional information. I had thought Patagonia might have a chance in court based on the case of Mustang trailers losing their trademark when the Ford Mustang came out. But of course, there have been cases adding to the case law since that case.

Mind you [the general audience]: what is lawful often is not just.

I also think you're [the attorney who is the previous poster] right that their motivation is the idea that having a drag queen associated with "their" name (again, they are both taking their names from the region in South America) is harming their image in this current climate. And I can see people from the right wing swarming them because they've deemed to company to exhibit insufficient intolerance. But that's not a reason to do harm. It's cowardly.

artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet

i keep seeing ppl being like "just get an id, what's the big deal?" about the potential voter registration restrictions, and let me tell you a story i am actively dealing with

i work with unhoused people fleeing domestic violence, and i have a client rn whose driver's license expired in 2024, and she needs a new id to apply for apartments. ok, cool. problem is, she lost all her documents due to the domestic violence

so we call the dmv. dmv needs a birth certificate. like i said, she lost her birth certificate. she needs a new one. her birth certificate is from out of state

we look up how to get a new birth certificate. the birth certificate needs an id to order it. cool cool cool

ok then what about secondary options? well, she needs two secondary sources of identification to order a replacement birth certificate, and she only has one, because for everything else she needs an id. fishing license? need an id. fucking park pass? id. she could have her 18+ child use their birth certificate to vouch for her, except her abuser won't let her talk to her children, so that's a no go

ultimately we land on social security card. this is where we're at in the process rn. ofc she doesn't have her ss card, so we need to order that. social security also requires an id to request a new card, but they'll take a health insurance card with a picture attached (god fucking bless them). she has medicaid but doesn't have a physical copy of the card, so we have to figure out how to get that. then once we do that we have to upload it to the social security website, and if that doesn't work, we have to, god forbid, call the social security office (takes literal hours) and then make an appointment. she doesn't have transportation or cell service, so we would have to figure out a way to coordinate me getting her to the appointment in order to present the document

then we wait 10+ days for the replacement, that has to be mailed to me bc she is unhoused and doesn't have an address

then we need to submit her request for a new birth certificate, which we have to figure out how to pay for, bc it is not free. they're at least a month behind on requests, btw, so we are probably looking at may at the earliest for that to arrive

then we need to take the birth certificate to the dmv

dmv also requires two pieces of mail not from a po box. she doesn't have an address, she is unhoused. she can use the homeless shelter in town, but we will need to mail her stuff there and have her receive it first, and also then the homeless shelter address will now be on her new id, which landlords will recognize and may discriminate against her for

during all of this she is sleeping in a garage. it was negative one degrees this morning. also, forgot to mention, she is terminally ill. some days i legitimately don't know if she lived through the night. every day is a toss up

the absolute soonest she will have an id is probably late may. forget voter registration--most rentals won't let her apply without it. she won't be offered section 8 housing without it. she can't apply for ssdi without it. she is blocked at literally every corner without it, and the absolute soonest she can get it is late may. the dmv literally has her old card on file, and she knows the number by heart, but it doesn't matter. it doesn't count if it's expired, as if she's somehow become someone new

and that's all with the help of someone whose job it is to do this shit. imagine if she didn't have a caseworker. she has a ten year old donated iphone that only works on wifi, she can't even do her own research bc she doesn't have internet half the time. how the hell is she supposed to get anything done on her own?

so yeah, fuck you if you think requiring an id isn't voter discrimination. "just get an id" is privileged af thinking and it infuriates me every time i hear it. lawmakers know exactly what they're doing with that restriction, and it's absolute bullshit

andthepeople

always funny to remember darth vader is anakin skywalker. the adrenaline junkie chucklefuck who used to dive head first out of speeders and built a pod racer in his yard when he was like six is now upper-middle management for the evil empire. half of his appearances in the original trilogy are Meetings. vader spends like 80% of his time dealing with bureaucratic bullshit. status updates. team meetings. holo-Zooms. budget rundowns. anakin betrayed the jedi and caused the fall of the republic and his punishment is being CC'd on every email forever. and you know what. he would hate that. the punishment fits the criminal

thememedaddy

lliveonthesunn

i get why people don't believe in marriage as a social construct but legally it is the best and easiest way to say "this is who i trust to take care of me when i can't take care of myself" and i'm so glad gay people fought for that right bc when shit gets scary at least i know im in good hands

darlingofdots

This is how I convinced my conservative grandma that the gays do also need marriage, actually. My grandad died when I was 4 and I asked her to imagine not being allowed to see him or make decisions for him or be entitled to an inheritance and she got very quiet and conceded the point. Marriage doesn't intrinsically mean anything but as a legal framework it is really, really important

byjove

Women throughout (American and English) history worked. The idea that in the past the sole responsibility of women was domestic labor and childrearing is largely inaccurate for the majority of women in these societies. Women were expected to do domestic labor like cooking and cleaning and raising children AND work to bring income to their family, this was true for the average woman, excluding the upper middle class/wealthy. If a woman’s husband owned a tavern or restaurant, she also cooked and kept bar and did the duties associated with the business. If a woman’s husband was a (small scale/subsistence/tenant) farmer, the woman did farm labor. Often a woman was expected to do labor related to her husband’s job.

Women also had vocations and forms of income unrelated to their husband. The nature of these jobs changed over time but many women did things like weaving, embroidery, crafting, beer brewing, chicken tending and laundress work to bring income. Women with skills were seen as better marriage candidates because they’d make money for their husband.

My great-great-great-great grandmother told fortunes and did farm labor, my great-great-great grandmother was a midwife, my great-great grandmother worked in a textile factory for most of her adult life and my great grandmother was a school lunch lady.

This is why it makes me irate when women on the right say things like “feminism forced me to get a job instead of being allowed to stay home with my children” before feminism you would have had to tend house, raise your children and bring income to your husband. Now, at the very least, the money is hopefully your own. Women were always in the workforce, their work was not recognized.

loki-zen

Just to add that the vast majority of fibre production and manufacture with cloth was done by women for much of history

loki-zen

relevant to that recent "people don't think working class women existed" thing.

What I think needs a little more spelling out as well is the way that historically, what we grammatically speak of as being the man's occupation was often in fact the entire family's occupation, with which parts of the necessary work each person did conventionally divided up along gender lines.

Just some random examples (the gender splits here are pretty typical but I can't say they're true of all cultures; I'm primarily familiar with western European history and especially the British Isles):

men fishing, women preparing the fish for sale and selling them at a market ("fishwives")

wives as salespeople and managers of the financial side of the business was also common for many male-coded artisan crafts; the man who is the 'silversmith' is actually smithing the silver (possibly with the aid of sons, apprentices and/or hired labourers), while his wife is taking care of everything else that is necessary for this to translate into a money-making business

husbands underground mining coal with a focus on speed over purity of product, children transporting it to the surface so he doesn't have to leave, and wives sorting the coal from the worthless rock on the surface. The entire family contributes to the pay check, which is based on the amount of sorted coal delivered.

wives as writers, editors, secretaries and research partners to male academics, scholars and politicians - also frequently doing much of the work associated with the networking that was neccessary for success in these careers. (It was not uncommon in some periods for wives to handle a lot of their husbands' correspondence, and of course a lot more socialising used to involve being hosted at peoples' homes. Wives of the relevant social classes for these careers were unlikely to be handling e.g. the cooking themselves - their job here is more like event manager and line manager of the staff doing the work.)

servants who were married were typically married to servants in the same household (and servant occupations were highly gendered)

"farmer's wife" and "baker's wife" and so on are properly understood as occupations, traditionally taking on parts of the work that a modern baker would need to hire someone for

the same is also true of soldiers' wives! this varies by army but in many pre-and early modern armies the 'camp wives' had duties and took on work that in modern armies is either done by soldiers (cooking, maintaining kit, guarding the camp, certain parts of supply chain management*) or external contractors *by which we sometimes mean 'brutalising local peasants and stealing their stuff'; womens' involvement in these activities is well-attested to in contemporary art

curlicuecal

I really really want to emphasize the academia one, because so many people think women weren't doing research historically, when more accurately they weren't doing *credited* research. But they were in the labs, working right alongside their husbands and fathers and brothers, getting the science done.

traumasurvivors

Even if I didn’t have a solid plan, in the back of my head, I always assumed I’d kill myself.

Now I’m an adult and people my age have their lives in order and I’m stuck here, confused, because I never planned to be alive and I’m so far behind.

I feel like I’ll never catch up.

traumasurvivors

Hey all.

I want to make an addition to this. I made this post a long time ago.

I’m currently back in university, and I’ve made so much progress with my trauma. I’m in a loving relationship.

Things can and will get better. It’s not too late.

Nothing is perfect by any means. But I’m happy I’m still here and didn’t kill myself. I hope you get to that point, too 💕

traumasurvivors

The addition is important! I see the original post circulating a lot, but the addition is important!

traumasurvivors

New addition two years later. I’m still going strong!

I’m getting married. I’m still in that loving relationship.

I’ve learned that there’s no real timeline. It’s okay. And while it sucks that I lost time, there’s still so much for me to experience and enjoy.

traumasurvivors

Newest addition. 7 years after the original post!

I got married last month! My dog is laying on me snoring. I’ve learned to have healthy friendships and relationships. I’ve learned that I’m not alone and that even when things are hard, I’m going to be okay.

traumasurvivors

This showed up in my notes again. And here we are. 2026.

I’ve been married a little over two years. I just got home from friendships that feel like home and family. My husband and I have our own place. I have a full ass book ready to be published.

I don’t know. I’m still in a good place and I can’t believe how far I’ve come from my original post.

allthecanadianpolitics

On Monday, the federal government made an announcement about the TR-to-PR pathway that millions of people have been waiting for. There is no new pathway. There never was. No way you can even submit an application. If you read the headlines, you might think something happened. The Globe and Mail led with: "Ottawa to fast-track permanent residency for 33,000 workers." That is exactly what the Carney government wanted you to read. For months, Minister Diab said the program had been "soft launched" and details were coming. It was a headline in the Toronto Star. On April 18, she spoke to a social media influencer and said the criteria would come "very very very soon." The video went viral. Migrants, who have seen almost every path to permanent residence slammed shut in the previous two years, were hoping, waiting, and paying. Immigration consultants used the Minister's irresponsible statements to get migrants to register for language tests, move cities, and prepare to apply. It was all a lie. Instead, on Monday the government announced the "In-Canada Workers Initiative" - basically saying they will accelerate some applications from migrants who have already applied and are sitting in the backlog. To add insult to injury, they highlighted programs that are mostly already closed or impossible to qualify for. The Agri-Food Pilot closed in May 2025. The caregiver pilots are paused until 2030. Migrants are devastated. And we are angry. More than 2.3 million temporary residents have had permits expire in 2025 and 2026. At least 2.69 million migrants are in Canada today on temporary permits. Another half a million are undocumented. The majority came here with promises of pathways to permanent residency, only to have the rules changed or watch those pathways disappear. They are working in Canada, sustaining our communities, separated from their families, paying into services they don't receive. This announcement is another slap in their faces. All to generate fake headlines. The government is counting on the headlines fooling you. Don’t believe them. Employers and immigration consultants are already using this to control migrants and squeeze money out of us. We cannot let them get away with it. Share this email with your friends to correct the record. Share our post on Instagram. And sign our petition now -- permanent resident status for all migrants, no exceptions: https://migrantrights.ca/equality In solidarity, Migrant Rights Network

----------

This is an email I just received. I have Permanent Residency (which feels far less safe than it did a year ago) but my roommate/QPP has been working towards it for 8 years (paying international student fees and taxes the whole time) and has been getting every door he was working towards slammed in his face as he reaches it.

~~~~

mfshipbracket

BONUS ROUND: Aang/Katara (ATLA) VS Kylo Ren/Rey (Star Wars)

Aang/Katara

Kylo Ren/Rey

Voting ended onMay 23, 2023

charlesoberonn

rettoujoutou-deactivated2025112

charlesoberonn

I just looked through OP's blog and every single poll is a popular m/f ship vs. reylo (with similar results). I don't understand.

cordezshenanigans

There was an actual bracket, but reylo got obliterated in round one, and after the poll was done, someone suggested it would be funny to do a "bonus round" where every tournament contestant is pitted against reylo to see how many ships, if any, reylo can beat

charlesoberonn

I hope it's none.

lindleland

It is beating exactly one of them.

beenovel

NOTHING could have prepared me for that

black--stars

Hey, when you talk to children, you know you can explain things to them right? thats theyre capable of comprehension? In fact you should be explaining things so they understand comprehension better?

Earlier my little sister slammed her closet and room door-- not out of ange as far as im aware, she just pushed them too hard. I yelled at her to stop it.

she said she would, but it was clear from her tone she just said so out of obligation and was annoyed. i tell her to stop making loud noises a lot, so she probably assumed this was just another example of that.

realizing this, i explained her the reason: our rooms are right next to each other. When she slams doors, the wall shakes. When the wall shakes, my mirror shakes, and if it shakes too hard it can fall and break

after the explanation, she apologized genuinely and actually understood the reason instead of just thinking im nagging her or just want quiet. the fact that she knows the reason means shes more likely to remember, and she can apply the knowledge in different ways: "even if my older sibling isnt home, their mirror could still break, so i still shouldnt slam the door." She knows im not just trying to annoy her or assert dominance over her like a lot of rules and demands we give to children do- i just dont want my mirror to break. It helps her understand cause and effect.

Would this result be the same if i had just screamed at her or spanked her? Or did it make more sense to just explain? After all, it was a simple mistake. I could see my parents doing the same thing-- when you close a door, youre not usually thinking about the walls in the other room.

Children are humans, humans use logic. Use logic with children. Its simple.

sandersstudies

I’m reading this book that talks about how children in a healthy home environment develop a healthy sense of shame (that is, a conscience and feeling that certain behaviors are wrong) while many children who are raised with a lot of parental anger or negative comments develop “toxic shame” where they believe there’s something wrong with THEM.

Got me thinking about how EVERY time physical discipline of a child (spanking, whipping, beating) comes up somebody jumps in and says “well I was just a horrible child, I needed to be whipped, I was bad, I had to be punished.”

As someone who works with kids and rarely finds a genuine naughty kid who can’t be reasoned with, I was always wondering what made those people so convinced they were horrible, and here’s the answer: those people developed a sense that they were naughty and bad to the core not because of their behaviors (which they should have learned are changeable) but because of the way their parents taught them to view themselves.

memeclassheroes

greywrenn

#‘el pastel promedio tiene tres leches’ es en realidad un error estadístico. El pastel promedio tiene 0 leches. Leches Georg#quien vive en una cueva y absorbe 10.000 leches al día#es un valor atípico qeu no debería haberse contado (via @deathbycoldopen)

adamsmasher

I don't speak Spanish but I understand every word

optionalcausality

I appreciate 'adn' being preserved in the form of 'qeu', that's absolutely beautiful.

no-one-offical

‎

hacvek

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

olyia-stories

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

dragonpyre

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

serinos-kitt

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

dragonpyre

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

serinos-kitt

So what is a rain shadow?

lethalbutterfly

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

roach-works

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

beatrice-otter

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

whetstonefires

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

beatrice-otter

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

maryellencarter

I wrote an entire paper in college analyzing the geology of the Misty Mountains and to a lesser extent the White Mountains (the Misty Mountains are easier because we get a cross-section via Moria). One thing I discovered that still knocks me for a loop when I think about it is:

Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?

I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.

There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.

Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.

(And as prev excellently points out, when Jirt made screwed-up geology it was very much on purpose. Mordor shouldn't be square! Mount Doom shouldn't be doing any of the things it does! A composite volcano shouldn't even have especially hot lava! Even the Gulf of Udun, the circular feature at the upper left corner of the square, shouldn't be like that -- perfectly round features should be impact craters or calderas, not The Mountains Just Do This In A Suspiciously Convenient Way. These are all the way they are because Sauron forced them to be, in defiance of the laws of nature. Remember, he's akin to Balrogs and was a Maia of Aulë -- he's a volcano spirit in many ways.)

sunflowergardens-world

Amazing work by the LoTR fandom, as always.

mysteryteacup

This also serves as an excellent example of why worldbuilding needs - more than realism - to be cohesive and work with the themes of your story.

natalieironside

Shout out to trans women who aren’t computer scientists or musicians or avant-garde artists or whatever.

Shout-out to tgirls who work at Taco Bell. Thank u queen, society would collapse without you

snkrfnd

Over twenty years ago my big brother got me a job at a Taco Bell in the St. Louis suburbs-West County. He warned me that it was the “gay Taco Bell”, but since I was coming from the “gay Howard Johnson’s” I wasn’t shocked. It turns out it was the black trans women Taco Bell complete with black trans women in management. And they’d worked out an arrangement with the local teen Narcotics Anonymous group so that twice a week we would shut down the drive thru and the dining room and exclusively serve 60+ teens in various stages of recovery. And many of the women I worked with were in various stages of being out or transitioning and they were from all generations from teens to over 50. One woman I worked with had a regular corporate job presenting as a man 9-5 Mon-Fri and then came to Taco Bell and worked 6pm -2am Friday and Saturday night so she could be herself surrounded by other black transwomen in those stolen weekends. And we had customers come from all over the metro area because they knew they could be themselves in the dining room. I only worked there from 1999-2001 but for young me, this was a vital, formative experience. Some of the girls came from north city all the way out to the “gay Taco Bell” on Manchester in west county because they heard it was safe to work there. Like- I know times have changed but they haven’t changed much in 20 years. I’m still convinced that for lgbt youth, finding a job at your city’s version of the “gay Taco Bell” is key to survival.

natalieironside

Thank u for sharing this with us

autogynophelia

TW: CSA

Sexual abuse in childhood fucks you up in quite subtle ways that you sometimes don't realise are abnormal until much later.

When I was 7, my mother made me go to Irish Dancing classes. The teacher groped all the kids, including me (and parents weren't allowed to stay for the lessons). After the first lesson, I told my mother what had happened and said I didn't want to go back. She said I was going to keep going whether I liked it or not. I cried before every lesson and she told me to stop being a baby. After a few months, the teacher was arrested and news spread around town that he was a paedophile. My mother said the accusations were probably made up. The teacher went to jail.

When I was 10 my mother decided that there was something wrong the way I walked (there wasn't) and took me to a paediatric podiatrist. He made me strip down to just my underwear, which were loose-fitting boxer shorts (even if I was already wearing shorts with the same inseam as the boxers), and lie down on the bed. He would put his hands on my inner thighs to "massage" them, and he would lift my legs high in the air and look down my boxer shorts. I was made to go back every month, and I remember each time trying to find the perfect combination of clothes that would make him not make me strip, but it never worked. I didn't even bother telling my mother I didn't want to go, I knew I would get shouted at.

When I was 11, we had builders in the house doing construction work. They didn't like the fact that our bathroom had no lock, so they installed one without permission. I took a shower one day, and seeing this new lock on the door, I decided to use it. My mother always used to come into the bathroom when I was showering to rummage through the pile of towels for no apparent reason. This time she couldn't get in, she hammered on the door and shouted at me to let her in. I did so. She berated me heavily for using the lock, and made the builders remove it the next day.

When I was 13, there was one night when I couldn't sleep. After a few hours of failing to sleep, I heard my mother walk into the room (I was never allowed to close my bedroom door). I pretended to be asleep. She walked over to my bed, put her hand under the duvet, and assaulted me. I didn't move, I was just frozen the whole time.

My mother died when I was 17. Everyone in my family told me that I must be so sad because she was such a wonderful and kind person. I just nodded along and didn't say much. One time I tried to confide in a family member about what she had really been like, and I was told that I must be wrong because she was so wonderful and kind. I've never brought it up again.

I don't mention all these things for sympathy, but rather because they demonstrate a pattern of me consistently being put in situations that I *hated*, but that I had no choice other than to just go along with. Any time I expressed a desire that diverted from my mother's wishes, I was told "too bad". So I quickly learned to not have desires at all, just to let life happen to me. Even beyond the CSA, I was never asked "What would you like to do today?" or "Would you like to do X?" I was just told what I would be doing every day of my life, right up until my mother's death.

Even now, many many years later, I struggle to remember that I have an inner life as rich, complex and valuable as other people. I frequently forget that the things I do or say can influence others. If I tell someone something, even something like my name, and the next time I meet them they remember it, that feels shocking to me, because my mind expects my words to have no impact.

I struggle a lot to say no to things. If someone invites me to something, it feels to me as equivalent to my mother telling me I'm going to do it. I just go on autopilot, and sometimes it's only after the event that I realise I could've said no. I forget that I have control over my body and my actions, I forget that I can demand things that other people may not be happy about.

Recently I was talking about some activity I did, and I was asked if I had found it fun. I started to say "yes", but then realised that I hadn't actually found it fun, I actually didn't enjoy it at all. But it never occurred to me that I could have an opinion on the activities I did, that I could say "actually I don't like this" and my words would be respected. If my mother asked me if I was having fun, any answer other than "yes" would result in severe consequences.

The fact that so many years later I am still thinking and speaking like that little abused kid was really eye-opening about how subtle and long-lasting the impacts of CSA have been on me.

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