#and it's been like 5 times in the past year and a half

[seeminglydark]

‘Johnny!’ he turned, familiar voice that had lulled him to sleep for the past 5 years, staving off nightmares with a calm and even flow. Caro was standing in the street, grinning at him, though he could read the edge of nerves in their eyes. That was the kind of reading he was good at, people. His heart skipped.

‘Caro. What are you doing here? I-I thought you were on tour.’ He stood still, feet frozen in place, feeling like the butt of some joke, but Caro just took a hesitant step toward him, that big bright smile they were known for shining in the dark, the twinkling lights from the grocer bouncing off their pale skin and atrocious ski jacket. They shrugged, fidgeting.

‘When you live alone, and you don’t have family or close friends to spend the holidays with,’ they began, looking sideways past him, grin faltering, ‘sometimes you get tired of being peoples pity invite. I know we’re just barely gettin’ to know each other again but… well. I thought maybe you might feel the same way.’

He blinked, disbelief coloring his tone, ‘You’re… saying you’re here to spend Christmas with me?’ They shrugged again and met his gaze, hopeful smile, bright eyes. He started to laugh, but it wasn’t a mean hollow laugh, it was an infectious joyful one, confusion and humor and before he knew what had happened, they’d leapt into his arms, knocking the breath out of him, while he tried to confess he only had a turkey tv dinner and a half bottle of strawberry Boones Farm between his laughter. How could they just show up unannounced.? maybe they could order Chinese or something, he thought, hanging onto them like his life depended on it, and it would be alright after all.

✨I haven’t had much time to draw since I’ve been visiting my hometown and spending time with my mom, but I had a chance to make a little something for the holiday season today. Enjoy! Johnny and Caro are from my webcomics Seemingly Dark and Mil-Liminal.✨

[dawnfelagund]

Back in 2019, I wrote a blog post called The Inequality Prototype. As part of it, I counted a bunch of stuff related to the Valar and looked at how those metrics differed based on gender. At the time, I thought it would be interesting to extend this work over the entire Silmarillion, namely looking at who speaks in the text and who doesn't. For Tolkien Meta Week, I began this work and am collecting my analyses related to it here. It is very much still a work in progress and will likely take me years to complete, but I'm going to post interesting data as I discover it.

This project, like all of my data projects, is available to use under a CC license for others who want to play with the data: View the data | Copy the data | Methodology, progress, etc.

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Dialogue does not occur evenly across The Silmarillion. While a little over 5% of the words in The Silmarillion as a whole are used in dialogue, this is very unevenly distributed across the chapters, with some chapters about half dialogue and six chapters containing no dialogue at all.

There is a lot more work to be done to tease out trends and patterns that might have some meaning, but just glancing at the graph above, some of those patterns do begin to emerge. First, dialogue increases as The Silmarillion progresses. In the second half of the book (calculated by chapter, not page or word count), only two chapters have no dialogue and only four chapters (inclusive of those two without dialogue) fall below the median of 5.3% dialogue. Put another way:

In the first half of chapters, 71% of chapters are below the median.

In the second half of chapters, 29% of chapters are below the median.

Why is this? My tentative theory is that we see the book moving from the realm of the mythic—from events that are passed down through the oral tradition and ancient written traditions—and into the historical, where the narrator has a greater array of sources, including eyewitness testimony, and begins to write with greater immediacy rather than the arm's-length style of myth and ancient history.

What I am curious about: As I dig deeper into these data, will I see this theory bear out in which episodes or characters/groups are granted actual dialogue? In other words, will characters and peoples lost to the mists of time speak less, as I would expect? Or will the type of dialogue (e.g., a formal speech that may have been preserved vs. an extempore conversation that would not) vary based on narrative distance? I have documented in the past that the narrator of The Silmarillion uses the "it is said/told/sung" construction more with characters who are less accessible, so there is evidence that Tolkien manipulated writing style based on what his narrators' access to various sources. Does he use dialogue similarly to communicate that "mythic distance"?

There are also chapters that are more expository in purpose (Valaquenta, "Of Beleriand and Its Realms") that do not contain dialogue. Without digging deeper into the chapters themselves, most of those without dialogue that aren't similarly expository are chapters where the material would be less accessible to Pengolodh as a narrator. Whether this bears added scrutiny remains to be seen!

Finally, in discussing these data on the SWG's Discord, polutropos noticed something interesting, which is that the chapter with the most dialogue—"Of Aulë and Yavanna," where almost 57% of the words of the chapter are given over to dialogue—was not in fact written by Tolkien. As document by Douglas Charles Kane in his book Arda Reconstructed, "This chapter is completely manufactured by Christopher, though using his father's own writings" (page 54). Where Kane usually includes a chart pointing to the source for each bit of The Silmarillion, his chapter on "Of Aulë and Yavanna" contains no such chart because, while he is able to document where ideas came from, Christopher actually wrote the chapter.

Interestingly, "Of the Noldor in Beleriand" is the chapter with the second most dialogue and, according to Kane, "The changes made in this chapter are among the smallest anywhere in the published text" (page 154). So Tolkien does sometimes write dialogue-heavy chapters—though without data to back me up (yet! it's coming!), most of that dialogue appears to come in the form of lengthier speeches, not necessarily the debate/conversation format of Of Aulë and Yavanna."

The biggest impact of the dialogue-heavy "Of Aulë and Yavanna," I suspect, will emerge as I dig more into the data on gender and who speak in The Silmarillion. Yavanna is one of the women who speaks the most in The Silmarillion, but almost all of her dialogue occurs in this chapter. If this chapter is constructed by Christopher, how does that impact the amount of speech women are permitted by Tolkien? Polutropos' observation spurred me to plan to document the source of the various dialogue sections: Are they original to Tolkien's writings or added? Kane, interestingly, is critical of Christopher Tolkien in Arda Reconstructed for what he perceives as Christopher removing women characters from the text. In this instance, we see a significant example of the opposite: a woman's role is not only expanded, but she is given an opportunity to speak.

[confinesofmy]

my cousin was flicking a lighter and said "wait is that triggering for you 🥺" because i quit smoking last year and i had to explain that in my experience the way nicotine addiction works i can literally smoke a cigarette and not be triggered because it was so deeply a physical addiction and not at all a "psychological" addiction which is so weird because when you're actively addicted it's like "man i just really love smoking cigarettes so much i don't ever want to stop and this is yet another hurdle in my quitting journey" but that's not even true. you stick a nicotine patch on your arm and that "psychological addiction" slips away instantly. it's the first thing to go. shit's crazy.

[crystalpallette]

《이걸로 영영 이별이라니... 믿고 싶지 않아?》

so that new rokia alt huh

[angeltannis]

5 years in healthcare

[ofcowardiceandkings]

the sinus headaches are already not great but Extra Shit has been added to the pile and im just sat on that right now trying to figure out what the fuck to do

[alongtidesoflight]

.

[pupkou]

i’m literally going to **** ******

[finnslay]

(Little ramble/vent)

From the POV of a persecutor, what the FUCK was that ATLAS!?!?

[syncrovoid-presents]

I am. Not dead. BUT will be gone for a like a day or few because the stuff at work did not! want! to! work!

Which I'd another way of saying that I finally was able to get free after working 34 consecutive hours in a row. The day prior I got 1 hour of sleep and that is all after 5 days of 10 or 11 hour work days.

I am so sleepy. I am taking tomorrow off and probably going to sleep right through it. Anywho cheers everyone!! I am going to go to the shadow realm now @:P

[euclydya]

shit we did not have time for in The Past:

having pets

eating candy and other snacks but primarily Candy

Sleeping In

lotcherslly just chilling

shit we Routinely Do now in This Life:

All Of The Above And Then Some !!!!

[theultracharmingladynoire]

Added a 'not ml' tag for posts about shows other than ml!

[mars-ipan]

having to get infusions as part of my treatment plan as someone with a huge dislike for ivs is kinda evil

[foone]

Bad idea: Age gap discourse but in a fantasy land where there's multiple races who have vastly different lifespans and life styles.

Is it wrong for a 27 year old human to date a 140 year old stone elf, considering most stone elves don't get out of diapers till their 30s?

Is it wrong for a 80 year old dwarf to date a two year old fire wisp, when fire wisps only live up to 5 years (between the eruptions) and have memories of their past lives, so in a way they're "born" at age 400,000+? That octogenarian dwarf is way younger than the fire wisp that's only physically younger than some of the socks the dwarf has!

Is it wrong for a chronomancer who was never born to date, well, anyone? They are zero years old and infinity years old and negative one hundred and seventeen years old all at once. They look like an old human, sure, with the long white beard and the wrinkly skin, but as far as anyone can tell, they've always looked like that. We've seen the cave paintings.

Is it wrong for a 30 year old lizardman (that's old in lizardman years) to date a human who is 60 years old in biological years (because of aging spells), 26 years old in lived-experience years, but only 13 years old in calendar years? (ie, they were born 13 years ago, but spent some of that time in sideways timelines, so they've lived more years than have passed in their home timeline?)

Is it wrong for a 12,000 year old dragon date a pile of 400 kobolds when kobolds only live like 10 years on average, but reach full maturity in one year? And if you disagree, can you do anything about it? You do know what happened to the last policeman who tried to arrest a dragon, right? Their city is still smoldering, 50 years later.

Is it wrong for anyone to date the time worm? It's the same age, every year. So the age gap can only intensify. If you start dating the time worm when you're both the same age, when do you break it off because you've become too much older than them?

And most confusing of all... What about the fairies? They could be anything between a thousand and a day old, they would lie about their age either way, and they can look like whatever they want. There's fairies we know for a fact have been around since the founding of The City of Towers, who met the silent mother herself, and also look like they're at most ten years old. Is it wrong to date them, or just really uncomfortable for everyone who sees it? And on the other side there's fairies who are "born" (hatched? They come from plants, I'm not sure what the verb even would be. Seeded? Sprouted, maybe) this week who are already appearing like middle-aged men and dancing with widows in what looks like a scheme to run off with her fortune but they never take the money, because what would a fairy want with worthless metal discs? Maybe fairies have a hive mind or genetic memory or reincarnation with full memories, they'd never tell you or give you a straight (or consistent) answer anyway.

Stonefolk are really the only inter-race dating situation anyone can agree on. They're unthinking & unmoving solid rock during the day, so those hours don't count. Thus their "real age" is a nice even half of their true age. So if you meet a stonefolk who was dug out 30 years ago, watch out: that's a 15 year old, and if you're a 25 year human, that's too young for you, even though their dig-date is five years before your birth-date.

EDIT: 2024/01/12: Changed the name of the Stonefolk

[phagodyke]

I have to be up for work in 3 hours and I'm gonna be real I think ive hit the point where I might not be getting any sleep at all. for fucks sake.

[relto]

i hate those moments where i know by conditioning that This is the time where you would do small talk. and my brain just shuts down and supplies -5 things to talk about.