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sir, are you still sad-wet-poetifying Maglor in this era of feral-fierce-warlord Maglor? can I interest you in this top-tier sad wet minstrel archetype with no battles to his name? his name is Daeron and he is ripe for blorbification. yes, he even has an unknown fate! you can also insert him into any and all post-canon events.

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before this post by @eilinelsghost I somehow never realised that I could use MY ACTUAL REAL-LIFE WORK for something more fun??

so I threw the official maps into a geographic information system and aligned them as best I could (grid in km)

And I very roughly vectorised some of the woods and rivers of Beleriand so I could measure them more easily:

Looks like I managed to get the size reasonably accurate. We're told in the Quenta that the length of Sirion from the Pass to the Mouths is 121 leagues (= 584.2 km) and that it's 40 leagues (= 193.1 km) from the confluence of Little & Greater Gelion to the confluence of Ascar and Gelion.

Only Narog should be 80 leagues (= 386.2 km) long but is >50 km longer than that for some reason …

(ignore the ellipsoidal lengths. we cannot use a map projection of course)

SO NOW I can tell you fun things like that the Isle of Balar is almost as large as Mallorca (3109 km²) and the Forest of Region is about the size (and shape) of South East England (19 144 km²)!

if anyone needs measurements or wants the geopackage, feel free to ask!

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merry yule everyone !

Look at this 'morgoth doing a big steppy on fingolfin' cookie

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I have a handful of aus that involve bridge four becoming either briefly or unshakably convinced that kaladin is actually a herald (either one who lost his memory, or secretly, as a test for the lighteyes (they're not doing well)). Actually there's probably at least one guy in canon in WOK who has this as his only half joking pet theory and a couple others who are willing to hear him out for laughs. When the Tower run second ideal happens he's just like I TOLD YOU GUYS I STORMING TOLD YOU.

Anyway Bridge Four Shenanigans such as:

swearing by different heralds names extra loudly to see if kaladin turns around at one

One guy around a corner burning glyph wards dedicated to specific heralds at timed intervals while you watch kaladin carefully to see when he twitches

Saying blatantly wrong things about heraldic legends to see if kaladin will correct you. this one actually works sometimes!!

Eventually teft (assuming its not a time travel scenario where teft is also pretty sure radiants shouldn't just know per-recreance things) or kaladin realizes what's going on and exasperatedly explains his Actual Whole Deal. The guys still keep the bit going, 95% because they've learned it really annoys Kaladin, 5% because he might still be a herald that's testing them only he has a new name (its a very multicultural group of men. What's one more name for Jezrian/Yaezir/Yaysi). And if he is a herald testing them then that's a dick move to pull on your own bridge crew so he deserves to be mocked for it.

Bridge Four being Assholes:

Very satisfying to angrily snap "Kaladin's hands!" to his face when he assigns you night watch for the second week in a row.

Or even just doing a normal herald swear and then immediately following it up with "SORRY CAPTAIN NO OFFENSE." The more panic you fake the better. He sighs so hard, it's great.

a genuinely aggrieved "CAPTAIN'S TITS" got such hard laughs after Lopen stubbed his toe that Moash almost threw up

but unfortunately. as we all know. if you do something ironically enough times. it eventually becomes an actual habit.

And now some of the other bridgecrews have picked up on it and the Captain might actually send the guys who trained them on a one way trip to the tranquiline halls. Skar tripped in front of Prince Adolin and cursed without thinking about it and now the Brightlord is asking. a LOT of questions. Couple of pissed off ardents might get involved. It's messy.

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me every time I read the Silmarillion: I think Maedhros needs a hug

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I have noticed that there are a lot of asexuals in my Tolkien fandom circles (which is AMAZING, as a fellow ace Tolkien nerd, I ADORE THIS)

but I do just have to wonder, just how big is this venn diagram? so: a poll. please reblog for larger audience

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Finrod crossing the Helcaraxë

Fighting a mild form of art block with something quick and dirty, aka Findarato crossing the ice (He hasn’t got a hat or a hood, I hear you cry. You would be right, please suspend your disbelief for the sake of DRAMA and hair snapping in the wind.

The crossing is a theme that I find deeply interesting, and I hadn’t painted Finrod before, so here we go <:

Hope you like it (:

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It's been one of those days. Pass the Lord Of The Rings quote.

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Christopher Tolkien is a god damn hero example; organizing JRRT's notes

Absolute champion. I salute you, sir.

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The epilogue:

From OP on reddit. Truly a r/OneOrangeBraincell classic.

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I think a really weird daydream of mine is getting the chance - however unlikely - to write some sort of Academic Paper about my blorbos and my favorite fanon takes. Well-cited, well-researched, whole nine yards.

And the professor will give me an A and scrawl at the top of the page, What an amazing original argument! Excellent command of the source materials!

And I will not say to my professor, Thank you ma’am. The true credit goes to my mutuals on tumblr dot com and a meta-dense nsfw 100k fanfic.

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you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

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Maedhros! If I was any good at it, I would animate this with moving hair and sparks.

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HEY WIT???

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@hellenhighwater Your poster’s making the rounds again without credit

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the joy of realizing someone is a similar type of freak as you