Phyna of Ithilien

generally Silmarillion and Russingon fan, newest hyperfixation: Jaime/Brienne, aroace, she/her

[phynaofithilien]

Theory: Celebrimbor actually also made five rings for the Hobbits, but Sauron, who had never heard of a Hobbit, either thought, Celebrimbor wanted to distract him or didn't even ask whether there were more. They are all in the mathom house in some corner, gathering dust.

[souryam]

love is a dream you enter

[theecarcrash]

a brienne i don’t THINK i’ll finish so yep

[dustbunniees]

tbh my biggest problem with go3 is that aziraphale and crowley do stuff that affects the plot and actually makes a difference in the story #notmygoodomens. my ineffables do NOT save the world, they are there while the world is saved

you’ve taken the two most useless beings in existence and you made them make a decision. look at them. they’re suicidal now

[eightfifteen]

Crazy how many people want characters in fiction to speak and act like they’ve had 20 hours of intensive therapy. Could NOT be me I want these bitches fucked up insane

[plutojester]

[doingthewritethings]

my friend briar and i lovingly call this one ‘therapy speak joker’ and it almost caused her to drop biological samples one time

[dizzyghoast]

i think the joker should start talking like this for real. no other character should do this only the joker. i want batman to have to deal with this

[teaboot]

Would you be comfortable with me sharing the story of how I got these scars

[fair-itself]

That would have been an incredible episode of Batman: The Animated Series, though. Joker gets out of Arkham, having convinced the psychs he's rehabilitated by speaking in fluent Therapy. Bats spends the entire episode losing his mind, because he KNOWS it's an act because NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT and Joker reacts with total calm and understanding when he finds Batman in his pantry at 2AM. "You're violating a boundary right now, but I realize this behavior is caused by a history of trauma. Can we talk about how your inability to trust negatively affects those around you?" Meanwhile steam is just coming out of Batman's ears

[seriousfic]

Are you in the right headspace to receive information on you potentially being overserious?

[lesbiansforboromir]

I've another tolkien academic article to recommend, though this one is far more easily accessible than 'Wretched of Middle-earth' thankfully, though is also amusingly written by some 'Millers'

"Tolkien and Rape; Sexual Terror, Sexual Violence, and the Woman’s Body in Middle-earth" by T. S. Miller and Elizabeth Miller contains #1 an excellent examination of Shelob's often remarked upon 'monstrously-feminine sexuality' #2 a robust (if still too nervous for my liking) critique of Tolkien's treatment of rape in all his body of work, and #3 a whole new anecdote about Tolkien's medievalist scholarship that I had never heard about. This anecdote is also, crucially, so fucking embarassing for him like it has to be read to be believed.

The paper is (I think?) pretty approachable apart from the quotes that are in middle english. And somehow a bit funny too! Which I understand is strange to say about an article discussing rape but look;

In what follows, we will insist on paying close attention to what Tolkien and his writings say and show about women as embodied beings who desire and who age, even when these women take the shape of outsized arachnids.

[tobermoriansass]

this paper is so interesting to me because it is arguably one of the strongest critiques i've read of the ways in which the legendarium treats the question of sexual assault and womanhood, but it also specifically suffers from its cissexual and racial limitations in connecting the dots on the libidinal anxieties being expressed via shelob/ungoliant and eol - and specifically in a way that would ironically have been thoroughly enriched by an engagement w miller's critique of racial hierarchies in tolkien (tho i recognise these guys pubbed before miller's paper was published)

bc what really stands out to me in a glaring fashion, that the authors simply do not touch on, is the multiple ways in which shelob specifically is described as having a sting and wielding that sting to pierce/prick men and then "have her way with them". they even recognise it! observing that tolkien is essentially giving a "monstrous feminine" character a phallus. but the spectre of the monstrous transfeminine remains unobserved in a way that's very fascinating. certainly the figure of both shelob and ungoliant as having feminine genders and yet representing masculine 'rapaciousness' - literally embodied in phallic appendages, in the case of shelob - can't exactly be detached from historical anxieties about transfeminine (or transfeminised) figures, esp. colonial anxieties over gendered differentiation AND then attendant anxieties over upper class suffragetism (satirical depictions of these women always masculinising them or rendering them sexless and oversexed at the same time). there is almost a literal blurriness in shelob and ungoliant - like spiders, but not spiders, but something more and darker and intangible; like a female but possessing maleness - that i think speaks to this anxiety. plus their association with literal darkness and blackness, but also with foreignness & liminality (ungoliant with avathar (itself associated with the south and east albeit in valinor) and nan dungortheb; shelob with torech ungol, a liminal space that is neither mordor nor corrupted ithilien; both lacking a clear origin in space and place) also speaks to some of the racialised anxieties around light/dark and geography that charles w miller contextualises for us in his essay. and like, this racialised transfeminised figure specifically is the source of so much colonial anxiety right? black women and brown women who are rendered both sexually frightening against pure white women, but also mannish and therefore ambiguously gendered against the neat dichotomous genderdness of white women and men; white women whose femininity is defined in opposition specifically to the image of the ambiguously gendered black/brown woman and in opposition to the third-sexed, often transfeminised being.

but also re. upper class suffragetism & tolkien's anachronistic victorian/edwardian anxieties - it IS very interesting that for tolkien, the ideal woman is one who reflects the sort of virtues of these upper class suffragetists, who saw themselves specifically as stewards of british virtues and british purity (and therefore, also, for whom neat gendered difference was paramount; one thinks of the early proto-feminism of the bluestockings and women like hannah more who would set the terms for what would later become the tenets of upper class "feminist" thought in britain, framed heavily in terms of religion, spiritual motherhood if not physical, and intelligent virtue, but essentially "womanhood"). i was reading a very interesting paper ages ago abt the panic around "white slavery" at the turn of the nineteenth century which talked about early suffragetes framing the need for women to have the vote in terms of the failures of british upper class men - because of parliamentary corruption etc - to protect them against foreigners corrupting or threatening innocent british women, enslaving and sexually exploiting them. its an interesting recurrent strain in that many of the "empowered" women of the legendarium in some way or the other do represent some sort of stewardship of political virtues - galadriel, for example, and eowyn too in very direct 1-1 ways; varda of course at a cosmological level, as the one who receives the unsullied light directly from eru and stewards it; luthien & elwing at a higher metatextual level (i.e. by reflecting the higher purposes of eru iluvatar and in-turn, becoming quasi-custodians of this unsullied light via the silmarils). but its also interesting that the way gender operates in the legendarium, nearly all the women reflect some aspect or virtue of 19th century white feminine virtues, or else are disciplined back into that differentiation of genderedness (luthien's heroism is later reframed in the text into "the jewel which beren won and luthien wore" and she disappears from the narrative while beren returns to fight in various battles; eowyn becomes a wife; galadriel diminishes and goes into the west; aredhel, whose life has been characterised by "unfeminine" "selfishness" and a desire for freedom that is constantly framed in proximity to the masculine feanorians, dies in an act of other-centred, sacrificial motherhood).

which sort of brings me around to the "not wholly unwilling" problem, which this paper depicts as tolkien's squeamishness with sexual violence and of him wanting to have his proverbial cake and eat it too - which i agree is very much what's going on! but i also think that's a very surface level engagement with what's going on and where an engagement with charles w. mill's work could be so productive. because nowhere are the racial hierarchies that underpin the legendarium so so starkly and clearly enunciated as in the silmarillion, and especially in the story of aredhel and eol (with supplementary text in the essays on quendi and eldar, where there is an articulation of intra-elvish racialisation(s)). bc like, well, you could read "not wholly unwilling" as rape apologia yes, but at a much deeper level if you read it against the way the text explicitly positions eol as lesser (both turgon & curufin call him a dark elf; eol refers to himself as a teleri living on noldor occupied lands), it very much also reads as a depiction of the anxiety that not only might a white woman be enslaved and sexually exploited by a non-white man, but that even worse: she might enjoy it and welcome it more than she might the attentions of the white man ("she was often in the company of the sons of Fëanor, her kin; but to none was her heart’s love given"). this also puts it in line with the recurring references to aredhel's marriage as though the main problem is not the marriage itself, but the loss of property (and therefore, power and honour). not exactly indivisible from the anxieties and tensions expressed in texts like a passage to india: the simultaneous sexual fascination and repulsion and the class/race tensions that shape the simultaneous libidinal fascination/repulsion of the text.

which i think is sort of like... its interesting how the chaucer anecdote is described because i think it reflects exactly the ways in which tolkien has deeply conservative sensibilities that very much DO reflect in the legendarium outside of the expunging of overt references to sexual violence, or the sort of equivocating he does w things like "not wholly unwilling". the authors very rightly describe it as bowdlerisation, done ostensibly because of the "mixed" audience. but why! and well, if you look at the sociopolitical history of bowdlerisation, its not just about propriety but specifically the anxieties over reading and the corruption of virtuous, delicate women of sensibility (often the preserve of upper class women who embody this feminine ideal) and therefore about the preservation of an ideal, feminine womanhood. (just think about it: at the time that tolkien is doing this, women authors like virginia woolf and gertrude stein not to mention colette have been writing quite openly about sexuality). which again: this is an anxiety that runs right through all his texts in one way or the other and even reflects in the ways in which he keeps trying to change galadriel's narrative to establish her as an uncomplicatedly pure, virtuous woman. and it reflects also in what specifically is recounted and what is excised or written in extremely elevated allusion in the legendarium's texts AND also in the ways in which the women in the text are gently folded back into neat femininity, once they have fulfilled their ordained spiritual heroic purpose. it is also reflected in, therefore, shelob and ungoliant as these being straddling the lines of gender and with all kinds of racialised anxieties about the figure of the non-white woman clustered around them.

which is not to say this paper is not good bc i think its arguably one of the best enagements with tolkien's attitudes to sexual violence, sex and gender more broadly. but also just think what we could have with a transfeminist or critical race-based approach to the text and to also tolkien as a man of his time! this is actually so exciting and interesting to me, okay everyone bye.

[lesbiansforboromir]

Giggling, kicking my feet etc to wake up to transfeminist and racial critique in my reblogs on tumblr dot com. I only have a few things to say since I agree entirely with your analysis of the severe limitations of the article's critical process.

Firstly, don't let them too off the hook when it comes to the publish date of Mills' 'Wretched'! A lot is made of the essay within Tolkien academic spaces (justifiably so, it is an excellent piece of writing) but Roger Echo-hawk published 'Tolkien in Pawneeland' in 2013 if I recall and whilst he remains I think more fond and forgiving of Tolkien's work than Charles Mills was, he still offers a durable framework of racial critique of Tolkien I think. Certainly a better one than Dimitra Fimi's.

And there is a thread of hypocrisy within the article's writing, at once critiquing Tolkien for his squeamishness over excising certain uncomfortable topics from his work whilst themselves avoiding the elephant in the room of Tolkien's racial and wrongly-gendered evils. My post about it was humourous, but it is truly notable to me that hook-nosed and brown-eyed Denethor, in all his self-immolation, his lack of warring desire, his preoccupation with his children and his choice to be 'burned with the house', is described as 'like a spider'. Contrasted with Eowyn's framing as precisely the opposite of him, there is a great deal of transgender analysis to be had! And very few people are having it!

I am reminded immediately of the Queer Approaches to Tolkien book, Sara Brown references this article in her chapter on Shelob's monsterous femininity, and then continues to say that more should be made of Shelob's queer gender and masculinity. But the gender queerness that she evokes is never a trans-gender one, and is especially not a transfeminine one, with her speaking of Shelob as if she is a masculine woman only. And, if I recall, also acknowledging the 'prick' but only in terms of it's described 'feeding' of poison to frodo as a darkly maternal act.

The very next chapter of that book is about Eowyn's trans-masculine Dernhelm adventure. But I confess that when the first paragraph still felt the itching need to state that it 'does not mean to state that Eowyn is necessarily trans-coded' I got so frustrated with the demuring of it all that I haven't read it yet.

All I will say that could be reasonably construed as a defence of such squeamishness is that the Tolkien academic community and the fandom at large is a demonstrably hostile environment to critique Tolkien in at all, let alone apply racial or transgender analysis to him. My own partner was the target of a flurry of abuse online for a transgender analysis and recieved little to no support from the establishment tolkien academic community about it. And, though I think I have seen this racial analysis of Eol reappear on tumblr in recent days, the original blog run by a black woman who spoke about it most often on this site was harrassed into deletion because of it.

So! The environment encourages this extreme nervousness and you will find in most Tolkien articles you read there is always a step they did not take that would have added immeasurably to the depth of the essay. And whilst I do not doubt there is a lack of interest to blame, it is also due to this unwieldy demand to spend a great deal of your wordcount on justifying that you have a right to say anything out of the norm about Tolkien in the first place. Which I suppose I say more to save you from greater disappointment in getting into Tolkien Academia than anything else.

I realise now I could be preaching to the choir I don't know your investment in the Tolkien academic community and to be honest I am also more of a parallel viewer than any kind of literary academic with a position in this space BUT STILL! For any other readers I suppose 😂 I was frankly just very excited by your reblog! It gave me just enough of flow state energy to reply :)

[important-cat-pics]

[jennydolfen]

Wayne. The man, the myth, the legend. Always remember, Ain’t no fellow who regretted giving it one extra shake, but you can bet every guy has regretted giving one too few. 🫡

Finished Era 2. And brought out the actual paints. ShinHan Pass hybrid watercolours on Fabriano paper.

I might have burned cadmium while painting this, as it sure as hell didn‘t feel like six hours. (Disclaimer: don't drink paint. I didn’t.)

Check out my Commissions Etsy Procreate brushes Patreon Inprnt

[importantpics]

[lazarus-lazuli]

i have no comment this is just the funniest fucking thing i’ve seen all day

[aquariumpacific]

She is beauty, she is grace, she is splashing water all over the place. 🤭🦦💦

Video by Mammalogist Erin

[liirker-at-thresholds]

I really like how the scientology speedrunning trend is developing, in this clip we see that the participants are

Not deterred by the closed door

Working as a group

Protecting their identities

Inflicting material costs to the institution via property destruction

Getting away at the end

These ideas were not all here from the beginning. They are genuinely gaining experience that can be applied elsewhere

[liirker-at-thresholds]

The church of scientology is on tumblr and they are sending me anon asks telling me that they can't even commit to reporting a post

[seerya]

Who needs sex if you can have a Master's degree in Criminal Psychology instead.

[seerya]

Maybe it should have been marine biology.

[balrogballs]

You know which two characters I’d love to watch interact? Fëanor and Bilbo. I just know that Bilbo would put the fear of god in Fëanor. The guy would change his name to Fëarnor after ten minutes in a room with Bilbo. Bilbo says completely out-of-pocket things every five minutes like it’s his day job. He once stabbed a pillar in Elrond’s house just to show Frodo that his sword was actually sharp as if there was no other way to do it.

That Hobbit would take one look at the Silmarils and ask Fëanor why he threw away his immortal soul for “what to me looks like a glorified matchstick, my dear fellow”. He would write a five page poem about all of Fëanor’s misdeeds from the time he broke a window as an elfling to the kinslaying, and then recite it to his face and make him give constructive criticism on the rhyme and meter. He’d say Nerdanel should have “gone for the smart one, not the pretty one”. He would say “my dear father is dead too but you don’t see me going around screaming like a banshee and killing everyone, do you?” He would tell Fëanor that many problems of the psyche can be traced to trapped wind, and inquire as to whether or not he ate anything “bean-adjacent” on the morning he made the Oath. He would ask him if he’d never heard of contraception, and suggest that he try breathing exercises next time he feels the urge to burn a ship or two. He’s mansplain Tengwar to him. He’d write a letter to Finwë telling him all this was the result of not disciplining his child at the age of five and send him a list of Supernanny-type childcare tips, “in case you want to try again, because I don’t think this world can handle underpopulation”. He’d have Fëanor crying in two minutes, I know it, I know it in my bones.

[repent-zoomer]

[dogsuffrage]

memes that get you unfriended by relatives on facebook

[technofeudalism]

memes that get you unfollowed by randoms on tumblr

[angbanggangbang]

*wakes up in cold sweat* hOW MANY OF YOU GUYS ARE GERMAN-SPEAKING!?? WHY IS THE SILMARILLION FANDOM SO DENSELY POPULATED LIKE MALLORCA!?? CAN I JUST BLOG POST IN GERMAN NOW AND IT WILL STILL GET TEN NOTES???

[hotvampireadjacent]

Great photo from birds facing forward