darkwing-ramblings

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@p0tat0-g0ddess I can give it a shot? I don't quite see it necessarily resulting in certain death but it's not likely to be the most fun either really from those three?

Maeglin is the elf who betrayed late Gondolin (aka where Sting and Glamdring are from and a key part in why their owners died), it was under some possible degree of duress but Maeglin was the king's nephew and didn't tell the kind to start preparing after giving away the location so. He also attempted to co-erce his cousin into marrying him. He seemingly competently ruled a Gondolin house for a bit and was a miner(?). He does, per canon, have a friend (Salgant)! So he's a mixed bag to draw, if leagues superior to, say: Melkor or Sauron (the dark lords), Thuringwethil (a vampire), Ungoliant or Shelob (giant spiders) and Glaurang or Saruman (both have mind affecting powers they can activate mid conversation). He's able the same level or worse than getting Grima Wormtongue, probably.

Yavanna is an ainur, one of the valar (aka major rather than minor angel-ish equivalents). She's married to Aule, the valar involved in technological progress/innovation etc and maker of dwarves. Their marriage is tumultuous given she made ents because of the fact dwarves, particularly, cut down trees and she's very pro-plants and nature left untouched. So she's not murderously evil but, say, fossil fuels in a car causing pollution and it being a human invention isn't likely to go down well with her.

Smeagol you already know, you've said.

The good news is that the three of them have no existing personal grudges or feuds between them: the bad news is one is a hobbit, one is valar and one is an elf and they have very little in common between them all. There lies potential for unpleasantness on a scale of stilted and awkward interactions to full on vehicular sabotage.

Which Tolkien characters will you go on a road trip with?

Spin the wheel up to three times and determine who is going in your car for a multi-day road trip. How is the road trip going? Will you make it to your destination successfully (or alive)?

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Gondolin, I just couldn't live underground it'd be hellish for I need the sky visible at all times with few exceptions and outside easily accessible for peace of mind. They both have survivors so that doesn't narrow it down and also Glorfindel lives in Gondolin and he seems like a blast so there's elves of a cheery disposition in both places.

Live in Nargothrond or in Gondolin?

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"Friends don't look at friends that way" I think some of you just need to be nicer to your friends.

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@eri-pl you're very right there, the list of what's better for ducks in terms of cooked rice, vegetables (sweetcorn and peas are on the easier end to throw than say lettuce but there are options), seeds, oats and food made specifically for waterfowl/birds etc is vast and superior to bread!

"i don't comment on ao3 because i don't wanna be annoying or weird" skill issue + you greatly underestimate the power dynamic here, writing multi paragraph comments is like feeding a bunch of deeply insane and possibly starved ducks at the park and watch them go completely mad over having received a piece of bread

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Civil War is not continuation of Age of Ultron

Here are my words from that reblog:

The MCU was good until 2015… Age of Ultron may not be a great movie, but that's where I draw the line… Old MCU/New MCU

Why am I not including Civil War…it's a good movie, it's not like Thor Ragnarok or Captain Marvel which confuse the chronology and start to reduce the entire franchise to pointlessness.

Civil War was supposed to show that the Avengers were responsible for their carelessness. Okay, this is a good thread. The only problem is how he does it. The writers won't think that Tony Stark taking Spider-Man on the team…doesn't work. Because Tony should make him realize that by supporting Tony…he supports signing up and taking off the mask. Peter doesn't know what he supports. He knows that Captain America has done something and he has to help because it's Tony Stark… How does this put the character of Tony Stark and the things he's come to understand in his previous films?

Also a political fact… suddenly the Accords are ratified and the Avengers are faced with a fait accompli. There should be a press conference something like at the end of Winter Soldier. They should present their case to the public… They should remind that Hydra recently infiltrated everything… and such a paralysis of their decision-making… may be beneficial for such entities…

Also, why did Ross blame the Avengers for the damage to New York… they were trying to stop the battle… It's not their fault, Loki is too smart. Not that it matters, I support Loki ruling Midgard;) But it's strange that the Avengers didn't remind Ross that this battle wasn't their fault. Maybe it's diplomacy's fault more… because they tried to fight and antagonize a being 1000 years older than them. Maybe if they sat down with Thor and Loki as mediators on the helicarrier… maybe the problems would be solved… or not… Loki, as usual, would be wiser. But at least they would try. (Yes, I'm a Loki fan… because first I'm a fan of Loki, and then I'm a fan of the rest of the MCU… Loki always comes first;)

I'm not sure how to rewrite Civil War to be more in line with earlier canon. Well…maybe remove Lagos and the Accords and start with the consequences for Ultron. Maybe some Senators want to take Tony's armor again. Maybe they'll decide the shield shouldn't be in Steve's hands. And in the background, involve this thread with Zemo and Bucky… Zemo could be this baron, an important figure from Sokovia who is publicly concerned about the fate of the world… and secretly works against the Avengers.

Civil War is a good movie… if we consider it the beginning of the New MCU Canon… which I allude to in this:

Because Civil War is not a good continuation of the threads of Age of Ultron. And neither is further MCU in general.

Age of Ultron threads

Hawkeye - having a family and a normal life, Laura tells him that in this world of gods and superhumans… he can make a difference… there is no continuation of this.

Thor - has a vision of destruction… what's more… it is said that he is guilty of it… how? Seeing at Thor Ragnarok, how can Thor be guilty of his father having an illegitimate daughter? What is Thor's fault in this? The vision talks about doom because of him, that he is a destroyer… that it is his personal fault… abandoned Loki plot?

Vision - is a consequence of Ultron's actions… and we don't have any storylines with it… how does he deal with it.

Thanos - already has the gauntlet. He has it. And he takes it from Asgard. I'm more betting on Loki offering it than war. But with a trick… Loki probably gave him the gauntlet, but he definitely kept the trick in his pocket.

Steve - sees Peggy's vision and knows that he has come to terms with the loss of what was… and he wants to continue building his life… completely abandoned plot.

Bruce - I don't know if Bruce was originally supposed to end up this far in space… Fury shows at the end of Age of Ultron that Hulk could have landed in the ocean, near the Philippines…

Also at the end of Age of Ultron, Thor says: someone has been playing an intricately game and has made pawns of us.

Another clue to Loki's abandoned plot? Because Thanos wants to destroy the Avengers at the end of Age of Ultron. Personally. There is no moral objection at all. He cannot be player making pawns. But Loki can. Because he was the one who played the game first and learned everything about the Avengers Team.

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I’ll never quite get over just how integrated kids are into daily Jedi life and the implications of that.

Dooku’s Temple "job" for years seems to have been “teaching lightsaber preschool.” Sifo-Dyas, the guy with the scary doom visions? Oh yeah, they have him working with infants, bringing babies to the Temple as a Seeker. Jocasta Nu is constantly depicted interacting with the younger generation of Jedi, teaching, helping, or mentoring. In TCW, she knows all the Padawans on sight. 

There’s just something really ordinary and charming to me about this. Sure, Dooku is a terrifying 2m of spider limbs in a robe, but he’s still going down on one sinister knee to check out the little crying kid who got a finger crunched by one of those wooden training swords. How many of the TCW-era Jedi were once babies who played with Sifo-Dyas’s hair loopies or cuddled on his chest as he pointed his T-6 back toward the Temple after another successful Seeking mission? (Space is, after all, cold. 🥺) You just know Jocasta is in very reluctant possession of knowledge of every single teen Padawan drama, crush, or breakup. She tries to stay out of it, but she’s broken up fights and pulled particulars into her office for tea and a gentle lecture on the inherent self-destructiveness of gossip. 

And these are not “just some” Jedi - they are all combat trained, politically important, at the top of their rank and even each sit on the Council at some point in their lives. The Jedi Order really went “super powerful space wizards with laser swords, yeah, but they should also all definitely know how to change a diaper." 

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I am entirely convinced that Virgil's puzzle gifts are the only thing keeping Logan sane

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to pretend that horrible people cannot make good art is another way to conflate beauty and talent with integrity and morality. the works of monsters are best examined with knowledge of the author in mind but art is not inherently reflective. human beings are creative, and habitual liars- it'd be stupid to pretend art must always be a portrait of its creator

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I’m not sure what’s funnier. The fact that in HBP Harry’s thought process goes “Hmm. Draco’s ignoring me. He must be a Death Eater now. Nothing less than a secret deadly mission from Voldemort himself could be more important than our rivalry.”

Or the fact that he’s completely right.

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Dude, the enemy is not "the group of people who can afford a nice house and car and take vacations and eat well and have enough saved for retirement."

The enemy is the group of people who make it IMPOSSIBLE for EVERYONE to have a nice house and car and take vacations and eat well and save enough for retirement.

In the US, "poor people" USED to be the people who had not-so-nice houses and cars, or who had to rent instead of own. And it's not the dentist down the street who changed that; among others, it's the ultra-rich CEOs and shareholders who refuse to pay a living wage so they can live off your labor, and the exploitative corporations that buy up as much housing as they possibly can and charge exorbitant rent so you'll never be able to own your own home. It's the bosses who decide that "excess" food must be destroyed if it cannot be sold at a price that enriches shareholders. And it's the politicians who encourage and enable all of that.

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Jedi Antis: The Jedi are too caught up in politics! They have power to change things, they just don't!

Meanwhile, the Jedi:

Every time they argue with a politician, they are shot down.

I wonder what that could mean? That maybe they don't have as much political power as the antis seem to believe? That maybe *gasp* they were meant to be the victims of Palpatine's manipulation the whole time?

[GIFs aren't mine. Credit to @david-talks-sw ]

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Thor Ragnarok: Past

Recently I had a theory that the MCU creates a supposedly ''coherent timeline'', but it is not coherent.

I called it old MCU/new MCU.

The endpoint of the old MCU is Age of Ultron. I wrote a post on why Civil War isn't a sequel to this. Now I'm watching: What If.

We have a scene from Loki and Thor's childhood. Quite an interesting scene….because it could never have happened in the MCU until 2015…

When Loki uses casket, we know how he looks like:

So What if episode 7 showed us how look like this other past. Past in Thor Ragnarok. Loki uses the casket against his brother, freezing him. Not only does this not trigger the discovery of Loki's heritage, but it also agrees with Thor's words in Ragnarok that Loki stabbed him as a child.

And as children Loki and Thor were like this:

So Thor and Loki's past in the Ragnarok universe:

Odin had a bloodthirsty past and was even older than his Thor/Thor Dark World prototype. It was he who made that Asgard had gold to build the city. He had a child with an unnamed woman, Hela. After some time, he grew tired of conquests. He banished the original daughter. He had a new wife and a new son. War with Jotunheim in this universe... Laufey didn't abandon Loki and he wasn't a bastard. In the script of Thor 2011 there is a scene where Laufey admits that he abandoned Loki and that Loki is his bastard… so Loki in Infinity War cannot call himself the rightful king of Jotunheim… if he has legitimate brothers… of course not we know nothing about the law of bastards in the 9 worlds… but that's another clue showing that the Old MCU only lasted until 2015.

Of course, this scene did not appear in the film… but it shows the creators' intention… that Odin was not lying about Loki being abandoned. That Laufey hadn't lost Loki unjustly at all. He never wanted Loki. He abandoned him.

And in What if:

Loki was probably kidnapped. Laufey was grateful to get it back from Odin in this episode. This is the Thor Ragnarok timeline. So in this universe, Loki was Laufey's legitimate son, which makes what he said in Infinity War make sense.

Side note, look at Odin with Laufey…he is from the frescoes that Hela depicted…not from the Thor 2011 movie that we saw

And during this war Odin looked like this in Thor 2011:

That's why I wanted to tell you, that's why the events don't fit so well.

We never see the future of the original timeline of 2015. There, Thanos got the gauntlet from Asgard and wants to kill the Avengers. The gauntlet in Asgard was real, not fake. There Thor went to look for stones. There, Loki is still plotting on the throne. Bruce probably landed there near the Philippines, not on Saakar. Hela does not exist there, because literally Odin chronologically cannot have such a past and so on…

Other my posts from this series:

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It's actually fairly possible that Théoden's mother was still alive during the main events of LOTR. She has no year of death given in the appendices (also technically no year of birth, but that can at least be counted from the age difference between her and Thengel), or anywhere else that I would know of. Nor is there any direct reference to her being dead, or text worded in a way that would be impossible if she were still alive during LOTR that I know of. The firmest piece of evidence there is for her being dead is only her absence from the story.

Now, yes, it seems likely to me that Tolkien intended for Morwen of Lossarnach to be dead by the time of LOTR. But Tolkien can roll in his grave all he wants if it's important to him, I am going to discuss the possibility of her being alive nonetheless because I find it interesting.

The appendices mention that Morwen was 17 years younger than Thengel, which would mean she was born in 2922. If my math holds up, that would make her 97 in 3019 when most of the major battles of War of the Ring are fought, if she lives that long. Possibly 96 if she was born late in the year, since those battles happen in spring of that year.

She is Gondorian nobility, mentioned to be descended from the Princes of Dol Amroth, though I do not think the details of her relation to them are specified beyond that. And if we look at the two Gondorian noble families where we have any kind of data for their lifespans, that being the Stewards and the Princes of Dol Amroth - the last four Stewards of Gondor before Denethor each lived 98-100 years. The last four Princes before Imrahil live to be 93, 111, 105, and 114, respectfully, and Imrahil lives to 100 years old. As for the next generation or two after that, Faramir lived to 120 years old. Prince Imrahil's son Elphir was 101 when he died, and his son Alphros was 99. Éomer, grandchild of Morwen Steelsheen, lived to 93 years old, despite his other three grandparents being presumably Rohirrim, whose lifespan (at a quick glance through the list of the Kings of Rohan) usually seems to range between 70 and a few years past 80.

So if Morwen falls roughly into the same range with the Gondorian nobility whose lifespans are known, then, yeah, sure, maybe she's dead by the time the main events of LOTR happen. But it's just as possible that she'd still be alive and even have a couple more years left in her.

And I just find myself fascinated by that possibility.

On one hand, there's the tragedy of her outliving at least two of her children, and at least one of her grandchildren. But on the other hand, when you consider all the women, all the wives and mothers, who fall ill and die, or waste away from grief or the horror and weight of the shadow in the last three or so decades before War of the Ring (Finduilas of Dol Amroth, Théodwyn, Gilraen, though at least Gilraen didn't die as young as the other two; and while her death has nothing to do with grief or influence of the shadow, Elfhild the wife of Théoden dies in childbirth during that timespan), I also see a certain triumph in the idea of Morwen enduring it and living to see a time after Sauron, if only briefly.

But if she is still alive, where is she? I see three possible options. The first is that she is still in Edoras. The second is that she lives somewhere else in Rohan, either in some other house belonging to the royal family, or with one of her unnamed daughters and her family. The third is that at some point after Thengel's death, she returned to Gondor and her family there.

The still in Edoras option seems unlikely from a logical standpoint, since there's no mention of her as there really should have been if she were there. There's something narratively pretty delicious, at least to me, though, in the idea that she might have been there to witness firsthand her son's decline and yet been for whatever reason unable to intervene

Living somewhere in Rohan, probably with another of her children (she had two daughters after Théoden before Théodwyn, and one who's even at oldest still under five years older than Théoden, so any of them could pretty plausibly still be alive), would make some sense, if she had wanted to retire from court life but still remained within relatively easy distance of her children and grandchildren. It would also kind of still allow for her being very aware of what's going on in Meduseld, while offering a more easy excuse for why she's unable to intervene and also not mentioned at any points in the books.

And returning to Gondor at some point after Thengel had died and Théoden had settled into the position of the king and all her children were adults likewise makes sense. She and Thengel lived in Gondor for ten years before moving to Rohan when Thengel inherited the throne, so it seems likely she'd have retained strong ties to her family in Gondor, rather than all those being cut off by her marriage, and considering all we know of Lossarnach, as someone on the SWG discord pointed out when i mentioned these thoughts the other day, Lossarnach seems like a nice enough place to retire to. It would put her pretty solidly away from all the drama going on in Rohan, though, but maybe if you're into fluff, Éowyn and Faramir could make a visit to her in Lossarnach sometime after the war

Anyway. I just wanted to say. Maybe Morwen of Lossarnach isn't dead yet, when LOTR happens. Maybe she gets to see what she probably never thought would happen in her lifetime, or ever at all, Sauron being defeated, Gondor having a king again. She'd have to face horrible loss, yeah. But she'd also see a new sunrise, triumph and joy like no one dared to hope for. So. Maybe. Maybe she's still alive, long enough to see that

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I’m still not over how well Reva Sevander fits into the storyline of not just Star Wars but specifically Anakin Skywalker’s story, that she’s not just a Jedi youngling that he brutally killed her family, but that the whole point of her character was that she was on the same trajectory as he was. “You have become the very thing you have sworn to destroy,” Obi-Wan says to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith. “Have I become him?” Reva sobs to Obi-Wan in Obi-Wan Kenobi. She swore to destroy him and very nearly became the thing she herself swore to destroy.  She rationalizes it, she says she wants “Justice.” when she goes after Luke Skywalker, a youngling like herself with a family willing to die to protect this child, just as the Jedi Knights died protecting their younglings, their family.  Just as Anakin rationalized what he was doing, that he was doing this for Padme because he couldn’t live without her, this was the only way he could become strong enough to save her. Both are just excuses for their own pain and suffering and their desire for what they want, not what the people they love want.  Both come from places of understandable and deeply empathizable pain, they’re both characters that my heart aches for. But Reva stops herself, she chooses mercy at the last moment.  She honors her family, they are at peace because she chose to spare the youngling. Anakin does not stop himself, he chooses to slaughter the children every step of the way.  He loses his family, Padme and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, all of them, because he refuses to stop, to embrace mercy, even here in this show, he murders a child yet again. Reva’s story isn’t just filler for this show, she is central to the themes of Anakin’s journey, she is a reflection of what he could choose at any point, while also being a voice given to one of the Jedi younglings that he struck down.  She is absolutely VITAL to show that Anakin Skywalker chose this and continues to choose it every day.

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Every time I think I get excited about you and think you can’t get cooler you do!! I love the love for Sister!!!

how can anyone NOT love sister!!! she's the reason for the single greatest scene in all of star wars literature!!

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Thrawn: Alliances | by Timothy Zahn YOU CAN’T TELL ME HE DOESN’T.

VADER’S REAL MOST CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET.