The Stars Are Alive

Archaeologist. Nature, space, and pretty things. Also Tolkien... a lot of Tolkien. Semi hiatus because life got busy. (Even less used blog is Laurasaurrusrex)

[serial-chillr]

Truths are pushed down, down where they shall never arise again.

My take on Dirthamen - I HC each of the evanuris might have had orbs that looked different and were specific to them.

The other raven is off getting secrets. Or maybe Dirth is the other raven. 👀

(I also painted Ghilan’nain here)

[itscolossal]

Hokkaido, Japan

[fluffygif]

lem me flop here

[island3]

Artwork for recent music releases by Scuba

[adizzyninja]

Space ring: ah cool

Overgrown apocalyptic space ring:

Ah. Cool.

[motherfucker-unlimited]

[lov-eswift]

Sunset in Bermuda | 7.4.19 

[nevver]

Look through any window, Marcus Cederberg (because)

[sean-o-neill-photography]

Glendalough

[just--space]

Astronaut Anne McClain’s First Voyage to the Space Station : “Putting this journey into words will not be easy, but I will try. I am finally where I was born to be,” said astronaut Anne McClain of her first voyage to space. (via NASA)

[cy-lindric]

Lady of Lothlorien

[martininamerica-deactivated2016]

Mozzarella does her best impression of a sausage.

[zedigalis]

I just love how after he asks if it’s a sausage, it looks down like “oh shit! I am a sausage :o”

[doggosource]

good boi

[viostormcaller]

OH MY GOD?????? OHHHHH MY GOD??????????

[sosuperawesome]

Ceramic Mugs / Enamel Mugs / Coffee Pots

She Wolfka on Etsy

See our #Etsy or #Illustration tags

[minjiminjiminji]

XKCD’s excellent presentation on historical global temperature and anthropogenic global warming. 

[After setting your car on fire] “Listen, your car’s temperature has changed before.”

[asteraceaeblue-deactivated20181]

For the “Earth’s climate has changed before” crowd.

[legsagorn]

LOTR + text posts

[mistergandalf-deactivated201601]

one of my favorite lotr facts is that gondorians speak sindarin as a first language and yet when faramir was talking to frodo and sam about cirith ungol he was like “we don’t know what’s in there.” like faramir. cirith ungol is sindarin for “pass of the spider.” do the math

[mistergandalf-deactivated201601]

some of my favorite tags on this post

[theelvenkingshalls]

Don’t forget that Frodo also speaks Sindarin, which makes this even worse.

Faramir: Hey, don’t go up the Spider Stairs.

Frodo: Why? What’s up the Spider Stairs?

Faramir: We don’t know, Frodo. We just don’t know.

[jumpingjacktrash]

to be fair, you’d assume the name means “there’s a lot of spiders here,” not, “there is one spider the size of a draft horse here.” so you go up expecting to have to shoo a lot of skeeter eaters out of your tent, and instead you have to figure out how to rope and shoe godzillarantula.

[ceescedasticity]

Hmmm…

They do live in a world where godzillarantulas feature prominently in mythology and history (Ungoliant plunged the world into darkness, scared the crap out of Sauron’s old boss, etc) and existed within the last century in Mirkwood. Assuming they ever talk to anyone who’s been to Mirkwood. They… probably know they were giant spiders in Mirkwood pretty recently? It’s hard to figure out how much anyone in Middle-earth has been talking to anyone else when we didn’t actually see it.

On the other hand – what if it’s the giant evil spiders’ prominence in history/mythology that’s causing trouble? What if lots of evil/nasty things/places get called “spider” just to indicate how nasty and evil they are, rather than any association with literal spiders, and it’s just… overloaded? Maybe the bad part of town in Minas Tirith is the Spider District. Maybe every tavern trying to be edgy calls itself the Spiderweb.

Actually spider/Ungoliant references could be really appealing to Gondorians trying to be edgy. They’re dark and evil! Plunged the world into darkness! But they AREN’T involved in the war they’re actually fighting, they aren’t directly associated with Sauron at all, so getting too interested in them would be creepy without being potentially treasonous. Because no one’s ACTUALLY going to worship those dangerous but not epic spiders up in Mirkwood, and no one’s heard anything from any proper spawn of Ungoliant in ages and ages.

In fact, spider/Ungoliant references might be appealing to ORCS trying to express that something is nasty and creepy! Nobody likes Ungoliant.

Maybe Faramir’s been to fourteen different Spider Caves across Ithilien, and half of them he didn’t even see regular spiders in, they’re just dark and damp and may have had orcs at some point, or something, and at some point in history someone got spooked. So you know, it’s POSSIBLE Spider Pass has something to do with spiders? But really it just means people don’t like it.

(The problem with this theory is we never actually SAW anyone overusing spider references. But it’s plausible they would!)

[wordswithkittywitch]

“The average spider on Middle Earth is the size of a dinner plate” is a statistical error. The average spider on Middle Earth is smaller than a coin. Cirith Ungol (lit: Spiders Gorge), which contains a spider larger than a horse, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

[iwilltrytobereasonable]

OH MY GOD

[superstressedspidergirl]

@dendritic-trees

[hitmewithcute]

[iridessence]

I’M SCREAMING this was SO rude

[nyarnamaitar]

@skyeventide