#Tolkien's confusing worldbuilding

[eri-pl]

only 3 hours???

#their problem if they don't see that as an honour and a pleasure#< prev tag#Most of them probably did#It's Finrod the beloved giving the presentation#and even if you get bored he is easy on the eye#plus let's face it you're in Valinor#what else are you going to do ?#finrod#silmarillion ← prev tags which are great

*also, insert here a gif of me getting 🤣 on the word "presentation" for extremely niche reasons*

My sympathies for everyone in Valinor who has had to sit through Finrod’s three hour long “The Secondborn: Why They’ll Destroy Arda and Save Us All” PowerPoints.

[winds-of-zephyr416]

You know, I’ve been having a lot of OC thoughts lately. Usually my family gets to hear most of them, but none of them are available so now it’s tumblr’s turn for insanity :)

So in my fantasy world that I’ve been building for a couple of years or so now, I have these… gods. Eldritch, celestial beings who exist as spirits in the world. They don’t really consider themselves gods, they’re really more like a lost civilization than anything, but the premise still stands.

Anyways, I’ve been thinking a lot about their culture and language lately. They don’t really have to contend with things like death, they’re very much so immortal and almost impervious to harm, so they don’t really do a lot of things for survival. They also typically communicate with a form of telepathy, so language isn’t even a necessary thing for them.

But they still have a language. They still have architecture. They still have a society that comes together to solve problems. Granted, it’s a lot different than what human civilizations look like, because of the whole “impervious to harm” thing, but they have it, and that’s what’s important.

You know what else is important? Their language. Especially their language. Good lord I am not normal about their language.

Their language is made up of sounds that mimic the world around them. Some words are built up out of rippling streams and birdsong, while others are made out of sounds impossible for us to even hear. Their words are crafted, and many are made to have double meanings and ambiguity. They can’t be ambiguous when they trade thoughts and ideas through their minds, so the notion of being able to say something with multiple meanings fascinates them. They write songs and poetry, and they are engrossed with it, because sound has never carried so much meaning before. They make jokes. They find misunderstanding hilarious, because they’re so alien to their usual way of communicating. They adore puns. Language isn’t a necessity for them, but they developed it anyway, because it gave them a new way of having fun that they had never encountered before in their billions of years of being alive.

Later on, when humanity comes into the scene, they realize that they can use this thing called language to talk to them. Humanity is not like the gods, humanity needs to communicate through a physical medium, whether it be through sight or hearing or touch. Humanity is often confused or overwhelmed when the gods converse with them, because they find that many of the sounds the gods use are completely incoherent. They can’t recreate the sound of thunder in the sky, or crackling flame, and often they look around them in fear, as if the sound alone is indicative of danger.

So, the gods adapt. They learn the languages of humanity, instead, and talk to them in their own tongues. But mortals are curious, and the gods love to learn and teach, so it isn’t long until the gods try to translate the sounds of their language into something humanity can listen to and understand. The music of the slow cracking of the earth is shifted up in pitch until mortals can hear and hearken to the sound, and the mortals in turn recreate it with what their voices will allow. Slowly, the gods make their language perceivable, and slowly, humanity teaches them how to make it pronounceable.

The resulting speech is neither mortal nor divine, but somewhere between the two. Its words have a rippling quality, and in each sentence one can almost hear what is being spoken. The word for wave becomes a low crash, the word for music becomes a dancing song in the ears of whoever is there to listen. There is no doubt that there is magic in these words, with the way they call everyone in the room to their attention and fill their hearts with the very soul of what is being said. This language is not magic in a sense of control, it does not bind things in the world to its will, but it carries with it the memory of the world it was made to describe.

Later on, this middle ground, this speech both mortal and divine, would become lost and forgotten. It would not vanish violently, with the sudden fall of an empire, nor would it fade away with the few who are “worthy” of speaking such a tongue. No, instead it would grow and evolve with the people who learned it, moving across the continent and coming into contact with new lands and people. There, it would teach and learn in turn, and then diverge again, becoming yet another middle ground.

Slowly, like this, the language of humanity and gods together disappears. It does not die, but it dissolves, morphed into a thousand little pieces that stay on in other languages. It can still be found, if you look close enough, at the way speakers arrange their words, or in the rhythms they like to sing. Not even its name is truly past, still being borne by a speech that closely resembles the one long gone.

No, the language of mortals and the gods does not die, because, even in the darkest of days, when it seems like the world will perish and all life along with it, each syllable uttered in fear echoes the language that once carried nothing but joy, and each sentence given in comfort is another window into the years when things were bright. The tongues of mortals do not forget, even if humanity itself has.

And even so, were the speech of humans ever to forget what they helped to create, the gods would still remember. And maybe, the gods would teach and be taught by the mortals once again, in spite of the mutilated darkness that enshrouds these present days. Perhaps they already have.

[aspecardaweek]

Aspec Arda Week: September 23-29, 2024

Hello and welcome to Aspec Arda Week!

This is a week-long event to celebrate the interaction of the asexual and aromantic-spectrums and Tolkien’s Legendarium of Arda. Though these experiences are not explicit within Tolkien’s work, many fans across the a-spectrum see themselves in Arda, and we are here to appreciate any and all interpretation of characters, relationships, and events through an aspec lens.

Any content about the a-spectrum in Arda is welcome! You can create edits, gifs, fanart, fanfic, fanmixes, and more! This event will run from September 23-29, 2024! Please tag your posts with #aspecardaweek AND @ mention this blog @aspecardaweek so they can be easily found. If your submission turns into a long post, please put what you can beneath a “Keep reading” divider.

Below are some prompts for each day of the week. They are not mandatory, but they are here to inspire you. This page will lead to an explanation for each one. The first prompt is the “main” prompt, but we are also providing more open-ended secondary prompts.

DAY ONE: Asexuality || Discovery, Confusion, Education DAY TWO: Aromanticism || Acceptance, Loneliness, Pride DAY THREE: Across the A-Spectrum || Hope, Complexity, Diversity DAY FOUR: Worldbuilding || Community, Change, Family DAY FIVE: Relationships || Companionship, Intimacy, Queerplatonic DAY SIX: Intersectionality || Connection, Relief, Friendship DAY SEVEN: Freeform || Love, Vulnerability, Identity

This event is being organized by @arofili and @astriiformes If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to message this blog or @arofili.

For further clarification, check out our about, FAQ, code of conduct, and prompts pages! Happy creating!!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: 7 Archetypal Narrative Arcs

In Christopher Booker’s 2004 book, The Seven Basic Plot Points, he outlines the seven main archetypal narrative arcs. They are:

Overcoming the Monster

The main character must stop the person or force threatening them.

Example: Dracula by Bram Stoker.

Rags to Riches

The main character begins poor, comes into money (and/or fame, power, and love), loses it, and becomes a better person because of it.

Example: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Quest

The main character takes an epic journey to find something, someone, or some place, running into obstacles on the way.

Example: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Voyage and Return

The main character visits a new world and returns home with a new perspective.

Example: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Comedy

The main character experiences an escalating sequence of confusing but comedic events, which are ultimately resolved into a happy ending.

Example: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare

Tragedy

The main character has a flaw or makes a mistake that results in their downfall.

Example: Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare

Rebirth

The main character experiences an event that makes them a better person.

Example: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References Writing References: Plot ⚜ Character ⚜ Worldbuilding

[shelleysmary]

OMg your post about the TROP haters. A lot of people don't seem to remember that several actors SUED New Line because they used the actors' likeness to make merch without compensating them. It's so weird to be acting as if any of these companies were ever ethical to begin with. People are also way too forgiving of PJ&Co for the joke of the Hobbit movies. It's not all WB's fault that those films were trash and to forgive PJ of some of his creative choices (like those CGI wargs that he actually approved of) is ridiculous.

listen..... i feel like i'm removed enough from the pj trilogies at this point to forgive all their foibles. they've been around long enough for me to accept them, and i find even the twilight-looking cgi wargs rather charming at this point. but that's the thing!!! the mere-exposure effect means that familiarity often leads to liking a thing better. the problem arises when certain fans forget that this is how the whole thing started. i genuinely believe that if trop can stick the landing and deliver four good—and i do mean good, not life-changing, i'm talking borderline decent (remember the hobbit)—seasons that improve on the first, in 8-10 years people will change their tune and remember it fondly, much like how we've all decided the hobbit is pretty okay, actually. it's not perfect, but we've accepted it into our headcanons and it has details we fully embrace and have integrated into our little store of tolkien jewels. that's why i contend that tolkien fans will always move on and take umbrage with the new thing. in part, i think it's the nature of the thing: tolkien himself left gaps and made so many changes throughout the years and from one draft to the next, and fans have projected their preferences onto them. that is the beauty of middle-earth!! for all that pj was accused of trying to make the hobbit his cash cow, j.d. and patrick are now getting accused of the same. no doubt there'll be fans who hate the hunt for gollum for that very same reason, but that doesn't change the fact that if any fictional world is made for this kind of expansive worldbuilding, it's tolkien's!

i understand that we're all passionate about middle-earth and we want things done "properly," but guys... your sauron is showing. sometimes we have to sit down and realize that "the way i imagined it" isn't always going to be what we see onscreen. the books will always be there! fanworks that align with our personal idea of what we wanted to see will always be there! that doesn't mean we can't be critical and expect quality from the shows and films we watch, but oftentimes with trop "this is a narrative flaw" and "this goes against my preference" get so confused. and people get triggered because they care about the world so much, but that doesn't excuse rudeness or cruelty or straight-up attacking those who disagree.

forgetting the journey we've all taken with the pj films is a mistake. so much unpleasantness within the tolkien fandom could be fixed with a little more patience, a little more wisdom, a little more grace. which. y'know. if you love these books... it's kind of a central theme. unless what you're really into is the cold hard mechanics of the worldbuilding and the power fantasy of the one ring.

this is just my personal opinion, but if the effect lotr has on you is to make you a worse person on the internet? touch grass. do a reread.

[thelordofgifs]

Obscure Tolkien Blorbo: Round 4

A fox passing through the woods on business of his own vs Eldacar of Gondor

A fox passing through the woods on business of his own:

A fox who found Frodo, Sam and Pippin asleep under a tree and was puzzled by this.

Yeah sure why NOT switch PoV to a (arguably) non-sentient creature for like a paragraph with no bearing on the actual plot besides the comment that it never realized that the plot was happening??

It shows up for one page for no reason.  It's great.

Listen, that fox is absolutely a borbo. Confused? Funny? Has enough to be memorable but little enough to write a shitload of fanfiction about? Someone I have actually written about? Twice? (they aren't on ao3 though) clear boorbo

Look, people have observed before, correctly, that one of the things that sets The Lord of the Rings apart is that Tolkien will tell us things about the well-being of minor characters, like that the hobbits’ ponies that they lost in Bree were okay and went to live with Tom Bombadil. Tolkien is the kind of writer who will switch the POV to a fox who happens to pass by the hobbits on the first night of their journey to Rivendell, because the story isn’t just about the main characters, nor is it just about the endurance of realms like Rohan and Gondor. It’s about every living thing in Middle-earth, and for Frodo it’s especially about the Shire, the home of simplicity and good food and community and gardens and foxes. That’s what he takes up the Ring to save, and the fact that he takes it up with that motivation, not personal greatness or heroism, is what enables him to get as far as Mount Doom. Gandalf lays this idea out to Denethor when Denethor claims the fate of Gondor as a goal above all else: “For my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come.” The Quest of the Ring is not simply about Men and Elves and Hobbits; it is about ponies, and the trees of Fangorn, and tiny sun-star flowers in the grass, and yes, a fox on business of his own who never finds out anything more about the three hobbits he once saw sleeping under a tree, but lives and thrives because of what they did.

Eldacar of Gondor:

The twenty-first King of Gondor, also known as Vinitharya. During his reign the conflict known as the Kin-strife occurred and he was forced from his throne for ten years.

The blorbo of all time actually. He’s the protagonist of one of the most interesting stories in the LoTR appendices, the Kin-strife, and everything about his life story is so fascinating! His father was the crown prince of Gondor and his mother was the princess of Rhovanion so not a Númenorean. As a result all the racist nobles of Gondor made noises about how Eldacar was of “lesser race” and wouldn’t live as long as a “true Dúnadan”. One of the most fascinating examples of fantasy racism in Tolkien’s works imo – the bigotry is awful but the bigots have a shield to hide behind! Obviously their concerns are actually valid because they just don’t want their king to die young! (Their concerns aren’t valid. But I think the worldbuilding here is great.) Anyway Eldacar was born in Rhovanion and given the birth-name Vinitharya, but when he returned to Gondor aged five he was obliged to take up the Quenya name Eldacar, presumably to pacify all the racists in Gondor. He’s the EMBODIMENT of mixed-race/immigrant child trauma my beloved. Eventually his father died and he ascended to the throne of Gondor, but then his shitty second cousin Castamir (all my homies hate Castamir he’s the worst) started the civil war known as the Kin-strife and usurped Eldacar’s throne. Eldacar was forced to flee north to Rhovanion but Castamir captured his eldest son Ornendil and had him cruelly put to death which is SO SAD. But Eldacar, being brave and resourceful and clever and extremely cool, put together an alliance with his mother’s kinsfolk in Rhovanion and after ten years reclaimed his throne, which turned out to be slightly easier than expected because Castamir was The Worst and all his subjects hated him. And Eldacar PERSONALLY fought and killed Castamir HIMSELF and AVENGED HIS SON which is extremely important when you consider all the cringefail elves in the legendarium whose quests for revenge didn’t really go anywhere at all. Then he lived to be 235 proving that all the idiot racists who were worried about his lifespan didn’t have any idea what they were talking about, as is par for the course with racists. Also the Kin-strife itself has such far-reaching consequences for the history of Gondor! The Corsairs of Umbar, Gondor’s long-standing enemies, are actually followers of the descendants of Castamir. And during the Usurpation of Castamir Osgiliath was sacked and burned, leading to the beginning of its decline as Gondor’s greatest city. Even though Eldacar’s story is, to me, ultimately hopeful, it’s also such a fascinating turning point in the history of Gondor. Also ALSO he’s explicitly surrounded by textual ghosts which is really fascinating. His father Valacar has “children” plural – so Eldacar had siblings!! What were they like? How did they react to it all? And his son Aldamir is described as Eldacar’s second son and third child, meaning that he had a daughter too. Who was she?? What happened to her? He’s such a blorbo and there’s so much interesting stuff to dig into around him and he has to win this entire tournament please please please❤️

Round 4 masterpost

[aleksanderscult]

The Grisha always describe the “making at the heart of the world” as this powerful natural order that precedes all things. I’ve always been somewhat curious about how much truth there is to it. Obviously in the Grishaverse, Grisha are very much real. So is there a canonical magical origin story for the world? The Blight in the Zoya Duology is described as being a corruption of the natural order, a reversion to whatever existed before the making at the heart of the world. Grisha powers are inseparable from the person they belong to (ignoring Alina here) so it seems that maybe Grisha are more in tune with the making? But Saint Grigori the bear guy also said in KoS that he taught the first Heartrenders… so I’m confused about how this works. I feel like I’m missing something very important in the worldbuilding.

You feel like you miss something from the worldbuilding because the author hasn't written in detail how exactly the Grisha powers have come to be.

Heartrenders might already had their powers but Grigori taught them how to use them and manipulate them correctly possibly? (So what, does that mean that the first Heartrenders were stupid?)

Ravka seems to worship Saints, not Gods. Okay. But how did the first Grisha got his powers? Where did they come from?

The "making at the heart of the world" is the very root of every Grisha power which fundamentally means that they manipulate the matter around them but they cannot create it. They cannot create life. That's why Alina was shocked when she saw the Darkling creating nichevo'ya. But apart from that, nada.

Leigh has created a religion and a group with powers but has never dived deep to explain to the readers what the hell is going on. She has just thrown around some random words "making at the heart of the world", "merzost", "thisness" and "thatness", explained in a few sentences what each of them are but the readers are still confused because she has created more questions.

Really, even us (the fandom) don't know much and even the explanations we have are too confusing and sometimes contradict each other.

Tolkien had built an entire mythology before he even started writing "The Hobbit" but unlike Leigh he was a genius and had carefully planned his story.

[cilil]

So wait, is the myths transformed version of Melkor supposed to be canon?🤔 I always thought the Silmarillion was basically just a collection of the most finalized versions of the first age events, but reading up on Morgoth’s Ring it sounds as if what’s written in there is what was intended to be canon by Tolkien?

It's a tough question that only Tolkien could definitively answer. Christopher Tolkien states in the foreword of the Silmarillion:

"On my father’s death it fell to me to try to bring the work into publishable form. It became clear to me that to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book, the diversity of the materials – to show The Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century – would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential. I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative. In this work the concluding chapters (from the death of Túrin Turambar) introduced peculiar difficulties, in that they had remained unchanged for many years, and were in some respects in serious disharmony with more developed conceptions in other parts of the book." "A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father’s) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all, at heavy and needless cost."

Basically, Tolkien worked on this mythology for over half a century and, as anyone who has ever even thought about doing their own worldbuilding can already guess, changed his mind on a lot of things. Myths Transformed in particular contains some later writings of Tolkien and deals with some changes he envisioned, particularly in regards to the cosmology of Eä. Christopher writes:

"In this last section of [Morgoth's Ring] I give a number of late writings of my father's, various in nature but concerned with, broadly speaking, the reinterpretation of central elements in the 'mythology' (or legendarium as he called it) to accord with the imperatives of a greatly modified underlying conception." (...) "With their questionings, their certainties giving way to doubt, their contradictory resolutions, these writings are to be read with a sense of intellectual and imaginative stress in the face of such a dismantling and reconstitution, believed to be an inescapable necessity, but never to be achieved."

So what we can say for sure is that Tolkien wanted to make various changes, but a lot of things were never quite finalized or properly edited or compiled, which Christopher then tried to do.

Which one is more canon? I don't know and the one person who knew best has not been with us for many decades now. But what I would say is that it's completely valid to take the Silmarillion as a basis for canon and use the other writings and other versions - both earlier and later texts - to expand on canon however you see fit.

While it can be fun to examine the material and try to piece it together like Christopher did, I personally am a huge fan of people engaging with various texts in various different and unique ways; it's just important to be clear and honest about what was taken from which text and what is headcanon/fanon and not try to present one's own conclusions as the one true canon.

I know this is not really a clear answer and thus may be not as satisfying, but it's also cool to see how things like this evolve, no? :D

[the---hermit]

Hi! I’m looking for books to add to my summer reading list. Do you have any favorite books that you would recommend?

Hello! I haven't got a book rec ask in ages! I am not sure what genres you like most but I'll try to make a list that is a bit varied so you have options!

The first two books that came to mind when I read favourites to recommend are The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (which I am currently rereading because it's that time of the year again) and The Humans by Matt Haig (which is one of the most underrated novels out there imo). You probably know about The Hobbit, if you have never read the book and are intimidated because lotr is intimidating, fear not because The Hobbit is much more approachable, and it's such a comfort book. You follow Bilbo in his adventure and I feel like it's one of the best examples of books that shut your brain off and let you escape reality for a bit. It's at the top of my list of comfort reads. As for The Humans, it's a novel I recommend every chance I have because it's so good and again super comforting. You read the story of this alien who comes down to Earth and had to disguise himself as a human without knowing anything about humans. And as he learns about humans and what it means to be human you get these amazing descriptions of daily things, and again as I mentioned it feels very comforting. It's the book I recommend for all the times in which you feel a bit lost and a bit hopeless. Lastly if you pick absolutely anything written by Neil Gaiman you are safe to have a great time. He is my favourite author and I think you can't go wrong with any of his books, and you have pretty different vibes from which you can choose!

Approaching your question from a slightly different angle, I really like to save long books for the summer. Of course studying it's the season I am less busy and I can fully immerse myself in longer novels. So if you have big books on your tbr pick one of those even if it's intimidating! I fought my personal big book fear a few summers ago and it's just getting better and better with time. If you want some big book recs I have to recommend The Priory OF The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (as well as A Day Of Fallen Night, which is its sequel, and it's probably the best book I have read so far this year). It's an amazing epic fantasy, with incredible worldbuilding, dragons and anything you can imagine. And I also think it's a great starting point if you have never read epic fantasy before, but want to try it! The big bookTM that made me win my fear was It by Staphen KIng, on which I have a lot of opinions that I won't go into right now, but it was one of the best reading experiences of my life. I basically spent two weeks fully immersed in the book, just reading and it was incredible. If instead of big books you prefer to get into a series last summer I read The Poppy War series by RF Kuang and it was a really good fantasy (tho definitely not a light read so if you consider it check trigger warnings and everything), and of course I cannot talk about series without mentioning The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir. I just reread it in the past couple of month and I had such a great time. The less you know about it the better, just strap yourself in for an amazing time and embrace the confusion it puts into your brain. To this day I have not found a book with a better narrator that the one in Gideon The Ninth, I really really recommend reading it.

Hopefully there's at least one title that you find interesting in the list! If you end up reading one of these please let me know if you had a good time! Happy reading!

[laoih]

Musing about adaptations:

One Piece vs The Rings of Power

I've been thinking about how happy I am that the One Piece live acton adaptation turned out as good as it did – especially because The Rings of Power was such a letdown.

I have been a fan of both Oda's One Piece and Tolkien's works in Middle-earth for 15-20 years, and both authors' works are very important to me. I was both excited and worried when I heared about them getting new online streaming shows. One Piece on Netflix surpised me in a positive way. The Rings of Power on Amazon suprised my in a very negative way.

Granted, in some ways these two projects could not be more different from each other. They had very different challenges to overcome. But in the end both had to achieve the same two goals, no matter how they get there:

One – as a stand alone work to be an engaging series with a coherend story, interesting characters and compelling themes. Two – as an adaptation to capture the spirit and essence of the original material its adapting.

Netflix's One Piece succeeded in both: it has an exciting story to tell that is driven by complex and likable characters, it carefully rebuilds the world of the source material, and at its core it captures the One Piece themes of freedom, pursuit of dreams, and standing by your friend's side. It works on its own, but it's also a decent and enjoyable adaptation.

Amazon's The Rings of Power failed to achieve either goal: its storylines are riddle with plotholes and confusion, its character journeys make no sense, it ignores fundamental aspects when it comes to the worldbuilding of its source material, and its themes are often in direct contradiction to what Tolkien wrote in his own stories. It's not a good series on its own, and it's even worse when seen in the adaptation context.

I wish One Piece on Netflix all the best for future seasons, I' excited to see more. I have no interest in watching anything else from The Rings of Power though.

[scyllas-revenge]

Hello! :) From the Fandom Asks game:

something you see in fics a lot and love?

a tiny detail in canon that you want more people to appreciate?

Thanks so much for the ask! <3

I love reading fics that develop distinct cultural differences for elves, dwarves, hobbits, humans in Rohan vs Gondor, etc. I've even read some that explore orc culture and I always find it all so interesting! Tolkien was so detailed in his worldbuilding, but he left a lot of the details about culture and day-to-day life up in the air, so I love any details I can get. From cultural sayings to different manners and kinds of food and religious practices and oooh I just love all of it.

A tiny detail I want more people to appreciate? I'll go with the bit in The Two Towers when Frodo and Sam are captured by Faramir, and one of his men mentions seeing a third creature with them- but he compares it to a squirrel. He confuses Gollum with a squirrel.

Idk what I want people to do with that info but I just like remembering that it happened. Is Gollum really that small and weirdly shaped? Is that guy half-blind? Does Middle Earth just have really fucked up squirrels? I love all of these options.

[apatheticlexicographer]

so i just watched the new d&d movie...

damn if only mike didn't die in season 5 so he would be alive today to see it <///3 he could've gone on a movie date with will as a birthday present <///3

we know they both love cheesy cinema from their star wars obsession so it's not like they'd film bro snob it. i just know their asses would be having homosexual mislife crises over how old hugh grant is now 😭😭

LIL REVIEW TIME (NO SPOILERS): i was very skeptical going into it bc of how cringe the trailer was, but honestly??? fun film!!!

the worldbuilding wasn't too mainstreamified (glances at the original d&d movies) but there was enough exposition that my parents weren't at all confused. plenty of little references for ppl who know more abt the lore, but they still weren't super obscure so u don't need to be a diehard fan to get them. a silly goofy tone and ik some ppl will clown on that, but it would NOT have worked if they played it dead straight. it would've been boring and cringe, and the d&d world is enough of a tolkien knockoff without the movie being budget LOTR. cute characters who were pretty tropey but didn't feel like cardboard. sophia lillis with tiefling horns. barbarian lady who can step on me (please). plot events felt like actual shit a d&d party would get up to, tho i won't get into detail. plus a sweet ending that DIDN'T fall into A Certain Beloathed Trope :DDD

i would recommend watching it!!! nothing revolutionary, but if u don't know a lot abt d&d and u want a little taste of the kind of shit the party would be getting up to in their campaigns (all cleradin is SO beloved to me but ik not everyone knows d&d stuff so some ppl take a more traditional fantasy route with it) then give it a watch!!! and i can certify to it being a fun time if ur already a d&d enjoyer :]]]

rating: 6/7 homophobic dogs

ok but seriously i need more d&d based cleradin content, and/or art of that movie date, and i DO NOT have the time to do it myself,,, 👉👈🥺

[thesorcerersapprentice]

4 and 5 for the Tolkien ask game?

- @kingkendrick7

Hi @kingkendrick7! Thanks for the asks. I'm really looking forward to answering these! If you aren't following Kendrick yet, go check out his Writeblr Intro and About Me post! He's got demons and vampires and a writing club, oh my! P.S. If you want to participate in this ask game, take a look at the full list of questions here: Tolkien Ask Game

I had a hard time distinguishing between these two questions, so I answered No. 4 for the research/expertise that went into creating characters for The Sorcerer's Apprentice and No. 5 for the research/expertise that went into worldbuilding. I hope this division keeps with the spirit of the original asks! Also, I apologize in advance for the enormous info dump you are about to receive lol You have summoned my inner nerd. Sorry, not sorry ;)

4. What are your elves and dwarves? As in: something you studied or know a lot about, something you can geek out about, etc.

✦ Cucufate: (pronounced: Coo-coo-fah-teh)This is a secondary character I haven't spoken about much because I keep going back and forth on some of the minor details. Generally speaking, he's a monkey (a Colombian Night Monkey or Aotus Lemurinus) who lives in Valeriano's mansion and befriends Altaluna. His character is based on two figures: the ancient philosopher Socrates and Bartleby from the short story Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville. What I wanted to do with Cucufate is find a way to have an animal speak without necessarily resorting to a 'human' voice (a voice that furthers our aims, mimics and thus elevates our culture, clarifies and informs etc.). This is where Socrates and Bartleby enter the picture. They both provide a language model that subverts standard communication. For instance, despite being the primary character in Plato's Dialogues and one of the most famous philosophers of all time, Socrates makes no positive or prescriptive claims (thou shalt not blah, this is that etc.). Instead, he talks in (flattery &) questions, undermining any certainty his interlocutors might feel by prodding and probing their knowledge of x, y & z until they are forced to reveal their ignorance (this is known as Socratic irony). Socrates' speech is thus a kind of anti-speech. If it spotlights a topic, it does so only to reveal the immensity of the darkness that sustains it, its lack of substance. Indeed, whenever Socrates opens his mouth, he widens the abyss that will eventually swallow his interlocutor's thoughts and beliefs whole, and terminate the discussion (silence). Hence, Socratic dialogue successfully humiliates and confuses us. It strips us of that very human arrogance, our intellectual bravado, so that we too can become wise: so that we too can share in the wisdom of knowing that we don't know. Doesn't the natural world do the same? Isn't that precisely the horror of climate change? The root of the unease we feel before our uncanny valley primate cousins? Bartleby, on the other hand, taps into the ambiguity of certain language formulas. His signature phrase "I would prefer not to," which he repeats whenever he's asked to do his job, expresses a hypothetical that... never seems to go anywhere? It's the Schrodinger's Cat of phrases, simultaneously dead and alive; he'd prefer not to, but... will he or won't he? Yes. The ambiguity, the inaction of it, dumfounds and incapacitates his employer. Bartleby's speech thus provides an example of a language that resists, confounds rather than clarifies, and complicates rather than simplifies. Like Socratic irony, Bartleby's masterful use of the conditional and modal auxiliary verb "would," disrupts the status quo. Because Cucufate's speech pattern draws from both of them, he becomes an effective helper to Altaluna; by engaging with her, he counteracts the temptation to think along the lines of a simplistic, "heroic" fascism (good vs. evil, light vs. darkness, us vs. them), and forces her instead to adopt a more nuanced stance, capable of aptly handing contradiction and ambiguity.

✦ The Secret to Altaluna's Success: I can't really explain this one without explaining the magic system. Since I don't want to give anything away before the big reveal, all I'll say for now is that Altaluna's strength as an individual and as a magic-weilder (although that's the wrong word, really) can be understood in reference to "La Conciencia de la Mestiza" (Chapter 7 within Borderlands) by Gloria Anzaldúa.

✦ Valeriano's Cruelty: Partially inspired by The Imp of the Perverse by Edgar Allan Poe (and he would know, wouldn't he, what with his cousin being 13 and a literal child when he married her). If you haven't read it yet, I couldn't recommend it more highly. It's very disturbing. To summarize, it tells the tale of a man gripped by the so-called "imp of the perverse," a self-destructive tendency to do exactly what he shouldn't precisely because he knows he shouldn't do it. A large number of Poe's characters take this tendency to the extreme. Valeriano does so to a lesser degree. Like Poe's characters, he enjoys doing the wrong thing because it's wrong but, unlike them, he won't put his life or his career at risk to satisfy this urge. So, who ends up suffering from Valeriano's perversity? Easy. Only those people who have the misfortune of being beneath him on the socio-economic ladder i.e. only those incapable of defending themselves against him. In this way, I've also written Valeriano as a critique of Western philosophy's stance towards 'evil.' From Plato to Kant to Arendt, philosophers have been adamant that people do not commit heinous acts because they derive pleasure from them, but rather because they lack 'the good' (respectively: knowledge of the 'idea of good' for Plato, a correct understanding of the moral law -the categorical imperative- for Kant, and, finally, the activity of thought for Arendt). 'Evil,' in most of Western philosophy, is always an absence of 'the good'. It is not a thing-in-itself. It has no positive, independent existence (the same goes for ugliness, but that's another discussion). Like Poe with The Imp of The Perverse (and Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment), I'm using Valeriano to disagree (and to show JUST HOW MUCH I disagree lol).

✦ Valeriano's Attitude Towards Truth: Partially inspired by contemporary French philosopher Michel Foucault's account of parrhesia in his lecture series, The Courage of Truth. Basically, parrhesia is a type of ancient Greek truth-telling that implies courage because by participating in this speech act both the truth-speaker and the truth-listener risk their lives; the speaker by possibly incurring the all-powerful wrath of the listener, the listener by risking the possibility of being made profoundly vulnerable by the speaker. Valeriano's exchanges with Altaluna's father, Peregrino, are an example of a failed attempt at this form of communication since Valeriano rejects any attempt at truth-telling from him. Indeed, he exiles and punishes Peregrino and, by extension, Peregrino's family for daring to confront him with his own monstrosity, which he refuses to acknowledge. By the time The Sorcerer's Apprentice commences, Altaluna has been thoroughly warned of Valeriano's inability to be a truth listener, and so, although she offers him opportunities for parrhesia, neither he nor she fully engages in this act as Altaluna is unwilling to risk her family's well-being a second time. This has two further consequences for the narrative. First, it means that while Peregrino is 'free' because he was able to define himself within the speech-act, namely to autonomously determine himself as a subject of a certain kind in relation to the truth, his truth, and to act accordingly; Altaluna's sense of self and her field-of-possible-actions are entirely dominated by Valeriano. She is who he says she is, what he allows her to be. She exists only between the limits of what he's willing to tolerate. This gives us an idea of where the plot has to go in order for Altaluna to reach the peak of her arc, aka. a moment where she wrestles free from underneath Valeriano's power and participates in a fully successful act of parrhesia. However, since we've established that Valeriano is incapable of being a truth listener, then it's clear that in order for this moment of liberation to finally come Valeriano and Altaluna's relationship needs to be turned on its head; Valeriano needs to become the truth speaker and Altaluna the truth listener. Furthermore, that the parrhesia has to be successful implies that Altaluna is going to have to hear something very hurtful from Valeriano and not abuse the power she has over him to punish him for it (as he abused the power he had over her father, Peregrino). Finally, and this is the second point I wanted to make, this reversal between Valeriano and Altaluna provides a commentary and critique on the efficacy of parrhesia in undermining (certain degrees of) domination.

5. What are your Middle Earth languages? As in: something you have expertise in due to a career, a hobby, something you love, etc.

✦ The Magic System: I'm actually not going to say too much about the magic system because I don't want to give anything away before the big reveal. For now, just know that the mechanics are equally inspired by contemporary French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's 'Ontology of the Flesh' as contained in his article Eye And Mind and his unfinished manuscript (published posthumously), The Visible and the Invisible, which I wrote my BA dissertation on; and Philosophy as a Way of Life by Pierre Hadot, where he argues that the true product of philosophy is the philosopher themself. It is also heavily influenced by Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society by Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, which just so happens to be one of my favourite academic texts of all time (and a fantastic read if you like Greek mythology).

[aspecardaweek]

Aspec Arda Week is only a week away!

September 23-29, 2024

Hello and welcome to Aspec Arda Week!

This is a week-long event to celebrate the interaction of the asexual and aromantic-spectrums and Tolkien’s Legendarium of Arda. Though these experiences are not explicit within Tolkien’s work, many fans across the a-spectrum see themselves in Arda, and we are here to appreciate any and all interpretation of characters, relationships, and events through an aspec lens.

Any content about the a-spectrum in Arda is welcome! You can create edits, gifs, fanart, fanfic, fanmixes, and more! This event will run from September 23-29, 2024! Please tag your posts with #aspecardaweek AND @ mention this blog @aspecardaweek so they can be easily found. If your submission turns into a long post, please put what you can beneath a “Keep reading” divider.

Below are some prompts for each day of the week. They are not mandatory, but they are here to inspire you. This page will lead to an explanation for each one. The first prompt is the “main” prompt, but we are also providing more open-ended secondary prompts.

DAY ONE: Asexuality || Discovery, Confusion, Education DAY TWO: Aromanticism || Acceptance, Loneliness, Pride DAY THREE: Across the A-Spectrum || Hope, Complexity, Diversity DAY FOUR: Worldbuilding || Community, Change, Family DAY FIVE: Relationships || Companionship, Intimacy, Queerplatonic DAY SIX: Intersectionality || Connection, Relief, Friendship DAY SEVEN: Freeform || Love, Vulnerability, Identity

This event is being organized by @arofili and @astriiformes. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to message this blog or @arofili.

For further clarification, check out our about, FAQ, code of conduct, and prompts pages! Happy creating!!

[blackfilmmakers]

- Dungeon Meshi is in the Fantasy manga genre which is very heavily inspired by Western Fantasy, particularly DnD and Tolkien

- Author loves said above media, and draws heavy inspiration from it regardless

- Said above media has roots in racism and xenophobic

"Why does Dungeon Meshi have aspects of Western Fantasy it. This is confusing and I don't want to unpack any of that"

Listen, at this point I suspect all that drama was because they really wanted Meshi to have its own completely unique worldbuilding, and were afraid that wasn’t the case. Which it isn’t, but like who cares?

If you like Meshi you like Meshi and in turn some elements of Tolkien. Or if you know what Tolkien tropes are, you can have a better appreciation of Meshi for subverting it(it doesn’t from what I’ve seen, but I digress)

It’s just I didn’t know what they expected, and what made them get so angry with us for answering their question

[booksandwords]

J.R.R. Tolkien by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara. Illustrated by Aaron Cushley.

Age Recommendation: Early Primary Topic/ Theme: Creativity, Writing Setting: Britain Series: Little People, Big Dreams

Rating: 4/5

I really like Sánchez Vegara's take on Tolkien's life. She does allow some of the dark to show, the moments that most impacted him. I was a little surprised that his complex but famed connection with C.S. Lewis isn't mentioned at all (🦁🌲 let's see who gets that reference) though seeing the TCBS (Tea Club, Barrovian Society) is as good. It may be better in a way because their impact on his life is more important when you try to prioritise them in order of formativeness. It does handle the darkness in Tolkien's life well the childhood deaths of his parents and the WWI deaths of his boyhood friends in particular. It includes all the most important parts of Tolkien's life including the tender age at which he created his first language 'Naffarin’ (based on Spanish and Latin), the joy his books gave people at the time and the endlessness of The Silmarillion. It does exclude the complicated nature of his relationship with his beloved Edith, but how do you explain that to children? It is all around a very good story, well targeted and not skimming over dark aspects. But...

One big thing I need to note, the thing at stopped this from being a five-star book for me. There is some inconsistency in the amount of time it took him to write Lord of the Rings. The core text says 12 years, while the two-page biography at the end says 17 years. While it appears to be a cardinal sin in what is a biographic piece. It appears the number can be 12 for the actual writing or 17 between beginning writing and publication (taken from The Tolkien Society timeline of the author's life). While it should have been consistent throughout the book knowing these numbers I'm not so concerned about the confusion, but it did take a few minutes to find this information, to confirm that both numbers are correct.

Cushley was a fantastic choice for a worldbuilder and creative soul like Tolkien. The colouring is a wonderful brightness, liveliness to the scenes outside and warmth to the scenes inside, especially by fire/ candlelight, Aaron Cushley has an eye for lighting. Cushley did a wonderful job of portraying the worlds away of daydreaming, the long hours and details of linguistic study and does of course find a way to include a hobbit (*I'm going on an adventure* 😄). The emotion seeping from the post-WWI scene is done well, I particularly appreciate the near featureless faces on that page. It gives me slight shell shock (the period-appropriate term for PTSD) vibes. Something someone else picked up in the illustrations that I did not is the handedness. Tolkein is drawn left-handed, I can't find an answer online as to J. R. R. Tolkien's actual handedness. A note on the cover... I like the inclusion of the one ring on the cover. A symbol of the world for which this man is most widely remembered. Of all the illustrator subject pairings this is one of the better ones with such brilliant capturing of the tone that was needed for Tolkien.