#eowyn speaks

[officialfoxsquadron]

darth vader // hamlet's ghost

[officialfoxsquadron]

Hamilton is a musical that has aged poorly quickly. It’s a musical that is a direct product of Obama-era idealism. Notably, LMM began writing it in 2008, the year Obama was elected, and finished it in 2015, the last year of his presidency. LMM is also an artist who I think gets grating very quickly-because of Hamilton’s earnest nature, he’s been trapped in a Disney hell of bog-standard musical theatre numbers. They’re catchy but not exactly reinventing the wheel.

It was subversive in its time for how it was made. It features a non-white cast, an overwhelmingly non-white production team, and rap music. I can’t remember the last time LMM made any reference to rap in his music. (There was a “rap” in Moana that was really more Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs.) Hamilton is filled with references to classic 90s rap which was exciting and fresh on Broadway.

The actual content of Hamilton itself, however, is a fairly standard retelling of the oldest American story—that anyone with a dollar and a dream can make it.

There’s something sinister about the big Act 2 number “What’d I Miss?” being Thomas Jefferson coming home to his plantation. It’s a song designed to get a big audience reaction (Jefferson is literally dressed as Prince and twirls a cane.) It contains a throwaway reference to Sally Hawkins, the slave Jefferson raped. The dancers line up to “greet” Jefferson. It’s uncomfortable, to say the least.

I also want to add there was critique of Hamilton and LMM at the time-specifically The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda by Ishmael Reed, which deals with the white washing of Hamilton. It premiered in 2019, but Reed was a vocal critic of Hamilton since 2015.

lin manuel miranda wherever you are its on sight

[magdeleinas]

rewatching lotr and dear god theoden is so so sad and depressed he's so ready to die whether it's giving up, riding into glory and death to face tens of thousands enemies, riding into glory and death 2.0 ft. the single best war speech I've ever heard, just sitting out in the open after giving out a defeated sigh realising he's about to be nazgul dragon chum. like my man my dude my best buddy please fight to survive I'm begging you. I totally get why he's like that but I didn't really realise that that man is Depression™ at every inconvenience he's ready to go packed his things half way out the door

[harrowscore]

people being surprised that the acolyte was cancelled and the sw dudebros won... i'm sorry, i really am, but what else did you expect? disney will always cater to this part of the audience. i'm not saying this because i feel superior or whatever, on the contrary, it's because i've been there too. i mean, remember what kelly marie tran went through after tlj was released, and how it resembles the treatment of the acolyte poc actors (especially, from what i've heard and quite unsurprisingly, of amanda stenberg)? it's nothing new. imo there has been a horrific regressive movement these last few years - conservatives, antiwokecels, straight up racists etc. have become even louder, more aggressive, and their numbers have increased. what once felt ''reasonably'' progressive would become, were it released today, the object of an unholy amount of unfounded criticism, with dudebros whinging like little babies because a person of color/queer/a woman dares to get an important role in a beloved franchise or *gasp* even get cast as a protagonist, which is dumbfounding to them because wow, you mean women and minorities actually exist and their stories are important too??? *surprisedpikachu.jpg* like guys, mulan was out in 1998. if disney had the audacity of making such a classic in this day and age, hordes of manbabies would cry about ~the evil feminazis~ and their nasty ~gender propaganda (whatever that means), and also ~communism!!!! because the movie is about a chinese woman. i'm sure mulan (as the hunchback of notre dame, to make another example, that with all its flaws as an adaptation is still explicitly against racism, specifically towards the always demonized romani people) had this kind of criticism back then too, but it was almost 25 years ago. the world should have and is changed since then, but in some ways we're going backwards. my theory is that since women and minorities actually got some rights and representation during the last couple of decades (and oh boy, was it a harsh battle to even get that) these people feel somehow threatened. they're not ~inherently superior or at the top of the game anymore, or at least many people realized they shouldn't be. and they're afraid, and as such they need to cast themselves as the victims. but other, way more clever people than me have divulged into the causes and spread of fascism and right-wing ideologies, so. i'll leave it at that

[officialfoxsquadron]

adding one of my favorite passages from Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor (THEE luke book in my opinion):

But I say to you: you are greater than the Jedi of former days. Luke could only frown, and shake his head again. "What makes you say that?" Because unlike the Knights of old, Jedi Luke Skywalker... You are not afraid of the dark.

cannot stop thinking about that comic panel and how severely it fucks. and also how severely it fucks with the “uwu sunshine smol bean” image a lot of people seem to hold of luke. yes, he’s incredibly kind and he deeply cares for people and the light side of the force flows through him like water. but he’s also impulsive and stubborn and quick to anger; he’s padme’s son, but he’s very much anakin’s too. and he uses his power for good because he chooses to. return of the jedi gives us a brief glimpse of a luke who touches the dark side, and it’s terrifying…and nearly unstoppable. if you are unfortunate enough to make an enemy of him, it’s not a matter of if he’ll find you, it’s when, and when that day comes you’d better pray he’s willing to extend the same mercy to you he did to vader. because otherwise only the force can protect you—and maybe not even then

[ladysparrow01]

Pick your faves from my faves game!

Challenge: make a poll with five of your all-time favorite characters and then tag five people to do the same. See which character is everyone's favorite.

I'm considering myself tagged by the lovely @dying-suffering-french-stalkers

I'm tagging: @flameandignite @trans-cuchulainn @frost0wl @benjhawkins @pentecostwaite and anyone else who would like to play ♡

[necrobratz]

gonna drop my thoughts here bc im thinkin abt it a lot but my transmasc ass cannot help but project SO HARD onto faramir

hes second borne of denethor, obvi, and denethor views his place as a woman absolutely useless in succession. he favors boromir bc he believes boromir will actually amount to something, whereas faramir will not. faramir grows up watching his elder brother train and be taken around by their father, meanwhile he must sit and be a pretty face in the background.

eventually, he asks boromir to train him. Boromir, being the beloved elder brother he is, does so. faramir is absolutely ecstatic. he wants everything boromir has and more, but it is not out of pure jealousy. he cannot place the feeling he has in his gut every time hes seen not as a young boy, but as a young woman. he’s miserable, and he wishes above all else to be seen exactly as his brother is.

he voices these thoughts to boromir, who responds with something along the lines of “then if you wish to be, you are as much a brother to me as any other man in this city, if not more-so.” they discuss many things, such as names and if to tell their father. boromir says to do so, and faramir agrees on the basis of more than just boromir acknowledging his true self. when they do, denethor is.. not pleasant! he only agrees to these “ridiculous terms” because boromir refuses to listen otherwise.

faramir proceeds to spend the rest of his childhood as a boy would, with the shadow of his father constantly looming over than him. he looks down upon everything he does, using every small mistake as an opportunity to point out his sex. no matter what he does, denethor will find anything and everything to berate and belittle him for. he must do everything boromir does and 10x more in order for denethor to even acknowledge his existence in a way that isnt entirely negative.

once boromir is dead, it doesnt get any better. denethor has no reason to respect faramir now, and just resorts back as if boromir had never told him. most people dont even know who the hell denethor is talking about because everyone just knows faramir as faramir, but he doesnt care. faramirs given up on ever trying to gain that level of respect from his father.

he meets eowyn, who is ALSO TRANS!!!!! they understand each other on a level no one else anywhere in their lives could. he finds so much comfort in her he gets weak fucking knee’d. they talk for hours and hours and by the end of it faramir is so enamored with her he cannot imagine a life without her. t4t farawyn is literally everything to me rn

this is barely coherent bc im watching two towers at the same time im writing this but heyy projection love it so much

[frodo-with-glasses]

I really like how you draw eowyn could you please do a tutorial or show us tips?

OH. Oh wow! Sure, I’d love to! It’s pretty simple, really.

Step One: Get Head. I have a variety of different face shapes that I use to differentiate characters from each other. I can sorta break it down into three categories:

Face height: Long, Medium, or Short

Jaw shape: Triangle, Square, or Circle

Face fat content: Gaunt, Angular, Average, Soft, or Pudgy

Mixing and matching these gets you different face shapes that you can tailor to express the personalities of the characters. Pippin is short + triangle + soft. Aragorn is long + square + angular. Gaunt and Pudgy face shapes are reserved mostly for Gollum and Sam, respectively. Eowyn falls somewhere in the realm of medium + triangle + soft when it comes to her face shape.

Step Two: Silhouette. I’m only drawing her from the shoulders up here, but the principle is the same when I’m drawing the rest of her body too: think long, slender, and no hard angles. Eowyn has a long, slender neck, narrow wrists, and thin fingers. She has a slight hourglass figure, but she has a tiny bust and her hips are not very wide. I try to keep in mind that when she’s wearing armor, she looks indistinguishable from a young man, so even though she’s pretty, her figure isn’t overly feminine.

Step Three: Eyes. I also have a lot of different eye shapes to choose from! Sam, Pippin, and Legolas are Round, Frodo and Aragorn are Slender, Merry and Gimli are Square, and so on. Eowyn’s eye shape is Round but with a little wing on the side to give the impression of thicker eyelashes. (I also realized on this step that I didn't make her cheek round enough, so I fixed that. I'm always making micro-adjustments like that as I draw.)

Step Four: Face. Again, think “long and slender”. Eowyn has a thin little button nose, a small-ish mouth, and very narrow eyebrows. Her ear shape is one of my rounder ones, but only because I think it’s cute.

Step Five: Hair, The Beginning. So this is where the hard part starts. Most of my characters have hair that either covers their forehead (eg. the hobbits) or doesn’t (eg. elves), but Eowyn’s hair does both. It’s also parted on the side, which makes it asymmetrical. I’ll show you how it works from this angle, but I have to get more creative when I, say, draw her from the other side. (I always have to keep in mind the shape of her hair, imagining it as a 3-D object and drawing it as such.)

So here we're gonna draw the bottom outline of her bangs where they sit on her forehead. Pick an “origin point” on the side of her head, where the hairline sits. Make a little jagged squiggle there to represent the roots of her hair. Then one little S-shaped swoop to show where her hair springs out of that point and then goes behind her ear, and a BIG S-shaped swoop up and then down over one eye. These lines form a slight “m” shape—with the “origin point” in the middle—and that makes the hair look like it has volume and lift, as opposed to just sitting flat on her head.

Step Six: Hair, The Second. With the bottom outline covered, let's take care of the top. Again, hair has volume, so it doesn't sit exactly flat on her scalp, but hovers above it in little hills; the closest it sits to her skin is that line where it's parted on the side of her head. I use faint, loose lines here, just trying to capture the flowing, wavy texture. Think Ariel’s hair from The Little Mermaid; you know, with the iconic swoopy floppy bit right in front of her eyes.

Step Seven: Hair, The Third. Eowyn’s hair goes down to about her mid-back, and it’s very thick and wavy, which I portray by using pretty much only S-shaped lines as I draw. It’s impossible to think about the physics of every strand of hair individually, so I’m drawing it in sort of loose “chunks” or “ropes”, keeping in mind how all those “ropes” would interact with each other and the shape of her body that they’re sitting on. You can see that most clearly in the “rope” of hair that lies on her shoulder. There’s no need to think too hard about this, but I always have it in the back of my mind somewhere.

Step Eight: The Frecklening. Now to add some details, including the lines on her neck and collarbone, the off-the-shoulder dress, and a bajillion freckles. She actually has less freckles on her neck than Pippin does—I concentrate it more on her cheeks and shoulders instead—but it’s still a lot, LOL! They are also on the backs of her arms and hands, where she’s most likely to be touched by the sun.

Step Nine: SHADING. This is why it’s important to think of what you’re drawing as a 3-D object, ‘cause you’re gonna have to work out how light interacts with it. There’s a shadow on her neck under her chin, of course, but where this gets really interesting is when it comes to the hair: because she’s blonde, I don’t shade her hair except a) at the hairline and b) on the bottom side of the waves, where shadows would form.

The darkest shading is on the underside of her hair. Think of it like putting a hood on your head while standing under a lightbulb: the outside of the hood gets light, but the inside, next to your head, is in shadow. Similarly, we can see the shadows on the underside of Eowyn’s hair, and especially under the floppy Ariel bangs. Adding that shadow gives the bangs the illusion of volume, which is exactly what I’m going for.

(EDIT: Forgot to mention that when I'm adding shadows to hair, the lines I'm drawing actually follow the path that the hair takes. The shadows on Eowyn's hair swoop and curve and wave because, well...that's what her hair is doing. There are some exceptions when I'll ignore the texture of hair and just shade it in with straight lines of hatching—especially when it's so dark it won't matter much anyway—but for the most part, "follow the texture" is my rule of thumb.)

Step Ten: DONE! A couple more details—including shading where her hair casts a shadow on her skin, and more freckles—and that’s it!

I hope that helps, Anon! I kinda skimmed over the basics here—like why I draw that + shape as a guideline on the face—but I’m assuming you already have some experience in drawing and just want to know the thought process behind my design. Feel free to send another ask if you need to know anything specific! Thanks for asking!

[misscrazyfangirl321]

I've paused for food gather, btw. Only one disk to go, tho!

[officialfoxsquadron]

thinking yet again about luke skywalker's relatively peaceful childhood ultimately being a band-aid for the fact that he descends from a line that begins with Virgin Birth by Force (read how you will) and his own birth began with his father choking his mother. rot and trauma is at the core of luke skywalker's story, waiting for him to discover it

[evergreen-lyricist]

t4t farawyn 🥰 reblog if u agree.

[frohoebaggins]

Do you guys think Eowyn and Arwen kissed atleast once? like yeah yeah they were both married or taken in some capacity by the time they would’ve met but like….

[ariadnie]

teasing the guy im seeing by telling him every 5 seconds that aragorn & legolas are in love. he countered that theyre bros and im like no....theyre in love.....

this is his most treasured piece of media 🤪 but they are literally so into each other...i know he knows it bc he doesnt argue anymore

[oneirataxia-girl]

me giving Mari the most painful memories of an ex ever:

[suzannahnatters]

all RIGHT:

Why You're Writing Medieval (and Medieval-Coded) Women Wrong: A RANT

(Or, For the Love of God, People, Stop Pretending Victorian Style Gender Roles Applied to All of History)

This is a problem I see alllll over the place - I'll be reading a medieval-coded book and the women will be told they aren't allowed to fight or learn or work, that they are only supposed to get married, keep house and have babies, &c &c.

If I point this out ppl will be like "yes but there was misogyny back then! women were treated terribly!" and OK. Stop right there.

By & large, what we as a culture think of as misogyny & patriarchy is the expression prevalent in Victorian times - not medieval. (And NO, this is not me blaming Victorians for their theme park version of "medieval history". This is me blaming 21st century people for being ignorant & refusing to do their homework).

Yes, there was misogyny in medieval times, but 1) in many ways it was actually markedly less severe than Victorian misogyny, tyvm - and 2) it was of a quite different type. (Disclaimer: I am speaking specifically of Frankish, Western European medieval women rather than those in other parts of the world. This applies to a lesser extent in Byzantium and I am still learning about women in the medieval Islamic world.)

So, here are the 2 vital things to remember about women when writing medieval or medieval-coded societies

FIRST. Where in Victorian times the primary axes of prejudice were gender and race - so that a male labourer had more rights than a female of the higher classes, and a middle class white man would be treated with more respect than an African or Indian dignitary - In medieval times, the primary axis of prejudice was, overwhelmingly, class. Thus, Frankish crusader knights arguably felt more solidarity with their Muslim opponents of knightly status, than they did their own peasants. Faith and age were also medieval axes of prejudice - children and young people were exploited ruthlessly, sent into war or marriage at 15 (boys) or 12 (girls). Gender was less important.

What this meant was that a medieval woman could expect - indeed demand - to be treated more or less the same way the men of her class were. Where no ancient legal obstacle existed, such as Salic law, a king's daughter could and did expect to rule, even after marriage.

Women of the knightly class could & did arm & fight - something that required a MASSIVE outlay of money, which was obviously at their discretion & disposal. See: Sichelgaita, Isabel de Conches, the unnamed women fighting in armour as knights during the Third Crusade, as recorded by Muslim chroniclers.

Tolkien's Eowyn is a great example of this medieval attitude to class trumping race: complaining that she's being told not to fight, she stresses her class: "I am of the house of Eorl & not a serving woman". She claims her rights, not as a woman, but as a member of the warrior class and the ruling family. Similarly in Renaissance Venice a doge protested the practice which saw 80% of noble women locked into convents for life: if these had been men they would have been "born to command & govern the world". Their class ought to have exempted them from discrimination on the basis of sex.

So, tip #1 for writing medieval women: remember that their class always outweighed their gender. They might be subordinate to the men within their own class, but not to those below.

SECOND. Whereas Victorians saw women's highest calling as marriage & children - the "angel in the house" ennobling & improving their men on a spiritual but rarely practical level - Medievals by contrast prized virginity/celibacy above marriage, seeing it as a way for women to transcend their sex. Often as nuns, saints, mystics; sometimes as warriors, queens, & ladies; always as businesswomen & merchants, women could & did forge their own paths in life

When Elizabeth I claimed to have "the heart & stomach of a king" & adopted the persona of the virgin queen, this was the norm she appealed to. Women could do things; they just had to prove they were Not Like Other Girls. By Elizabeth's time things were already changing: it was the Reformation that switched the ideal to marriage, & the Enlightenment that divorced femininity from reason, aggression & public life.

For more on this topic, read Katherine Hager's article "Endowed With Manly Courage: Medieval Perceptions of Women in Combat" on women who transcended gender to occupy a liminal space as warrior/virgin/saint.

So, tip #2: remember that for medieval women, wife and mother wasn't the ideal, virgin saint was the ideal. By proving yourself "not like other girls" you could gain significant autonomy & freedom.

Finally a bonus tip: if writing about medieval women, be sure to read writing on women's issues from the time so as to understand the terms in which these women spoke about & defended their ambitions. Start with Christine de Pisan.

I learned all this doing the reading for WATCHERS OF OUTREMER, my series of historical fantasy novels set in the medieval crusader states, which were dominated by strong medieval women! Book 5, THE HOUSE OF MOURNING (forthcoming 2023) will focus, to a greater extent than any other novel I've ever yet read or written, on the experience of women during the crusades - as warriors, captives, and political leaders. I can't wait to share it with you all!