#tolkien encyclopedia

[fictionfordays]

Flowers

Main Masterlist | Tolkien Masterlist

Maedhros enjoys flowers. So much so that he takes it upon himself to study them, pressing flowers on a page in a special journal with notes written about it.

While he doesn't study herbs the way someone like Tyelkormo would, he does study the edible and medicinal uses of flowers, making it a point to include flowers in some of the pastries he makes. Topping salads with sugared dianthus, tea cakes made with a creamy chamomile tea, mixing lavender with blueberries in a dish similar to a soufflé pancake, even rose and apple scones.

He loves to look at them. He doesn't mind picking enough to make a seasonal crown, or getting his hands dirty in his own personal little garden. He doesn't mind the thorns on the rose bush that seem to always catch his hair, untangling it from the loose braid he put it in earlier. Or the way raspberry thorns snag on his clothes. They can be mended, after all.

If you prick your finger, he'll dote on you: kissing your little scrape with a small smile. He'll affectionately tell you to be kinder to the roses next time so you won't get pricked again~

Join the Taglist! || Ko-fi || Artistree || ArtStation

Tags: @a-contemplation-upon-flowers @asianbutnotjapanese @eunoiaastralwings @manjirwo @stopisa @wandererindreams

I do not own these characters. All rights to the original creators. All content—created rights are reserved to Wallabypirate©2024.

[beginnerblueglass]

*Takes Tolkien away from you*

[furrybluewhatever]

I'm going to my friends to give Dark Crystal a third go. I feel like such a fake fan that I struggle to finish it 💀 I just can't figure out why. Maybe the main characters are a little unexciting? The visuals are fantastic though and I desperately want to make Fizzgig.

[labyrinths-library]

Book 49 of 2024

An Encyclopedia of Tolkien: The History + Mythology that Inspired Tolkien's World by David Day

★★★★

Find the author here. Read the Tolkien Gateway page about David Day here.

Pages: 531

Genre: "Nonfiction"

Review:

Okay so. I'm going to preface this and all subsequent David Day entries accordingly:

I recently got into Tolkien and it can be daunting. I saw Day's collection of novels and read them all first before I started Lord of the Rings for the first time so I'd have some incite into the greater lore of it all and because there are so many characters that I wanted to better keep track of them all. I found Day's work to be gorgeously illustrated and fairly interesting, but as I've been taught in my various Tolkien writing event discord servers, always take him with a decent grain of salt.

It was super helpful and had a bunch of information about what could have inspired Tolkien. I'm not entirely sure how accurate it all was. I love how the entries are interconnected like an actual encyclopedia. It has gorgeous art. It's a decent starting point/reference book, like using wikipedia to find your starting point.

[erismourn]

with respect to mr tolkien. what the fuck kind of world map is this

[ouchmaster6000]

Sexy Balrog from the Monster Girl Encyclopedia:

[rapha-reads]

"So with regard to fairy stories, I feel that it is more interesting, and also in its way more difficult, to consider what they are, what they have become for us, and what values the long alchemic processes of time have produced in them. In Dasent's words I would say: “We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.” Though, oddly enough, Dasent by “the soup” meant a mishmash of bogus pre-history founded on the early surmises of Comparative Philology; and by “desire to see the bones” he meant a demand to see the workings and the proofs that led to these theories. By “the soup” I mean the story as it is served up by its author or teller, and by “the bones” its sources or material—even when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not, of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup." Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories"

Gods, I adore Tolkien's writing.

[shakespearesdaughters]

Books To Read In 2025

A Brief History of Time

Agamemnon by Aeschylus

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Babel or the Necessity of Violence

Beasts by Joyce Carol Oates

Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope

Brave New World

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

Crime and Punishment

Corpus of Mycenaean Inscriptions from Knossos

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Lycidas by John Milton

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Marino Faliero by Lord Byron

Mémoires by Duc de Saint-Simon

Men of Thought and Deed by E. Tipton

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Orestia by Aeschylus

Othello by Shakespeare

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Poetics by Aristotle

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Republic, Book II by Plato

Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Bacchae by Euripides

The Broken Heart by John Ford

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Collector by John Fowles

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Iliad by Homer

The Lotus Eater by Homer

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

The Malcontent by John Marston

The New Testament

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Pirates of Penzance by W.S. Gilbert

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Untimely Meditations by Friedrich Nietzsche

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller

With Rue My Heart is Laden by A.E. Housman

Journey from Chester to London by Thomas Pennant

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

The Club History of London by ?

The World Book Encyclopedia

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Rover Boys by Edward Stratemeyer

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

The Shining by Stephen King

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Normal People by Sally Rooney

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

[literaryvein-reblogs]

5 More Literary Terms for Studying Prose Narratives

ANAGNORISIS: (Greek for "recognition"): A term used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the moment of tragic recognition in which the protagonist realizes some important fact or insight, especially a truth about himself, human nature, or his situation. Aristotle argues that the ideal moment for anagnorisis in a tragedy is the moment of peripeteia, the reversal of fortune. Critics often claim that the moment of tragic recognition is found within a single line of text, in which the tragic hero admits to his lack of insight or asserts the new truth he recognizes. This passage is often called the "line of tragic recognition."

CLOSE READING: Reading a piece of literature carefully, bit by bit, in order to analyze the significance of every individual word, image, and artistic ornament.

EPISTOLARY: Taking the form of a letter, or actually consisting of a letter written to another. For instance, several books in the New Testament written by Saint Paul are epistolary--they were originally letters written to newly founded Christian churches. Sometimes, novelists will write an epistolary novel, in which the story is unveiled as a series of letters between the characters. Some examples include C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, Richardson's Pamela (1740), Fanny Burney's Evelina, Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse, Hannah W. Foster's The Coquette, and John Barth's Letters.

EUCATASTROPHE ("happy or fortunate ending"): As Christopher Garbowski describes in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Tolkien coined this term in his Andrew Lang Lecture entitled "On Fairy-stories." It applies to a final resolution in fantasy literature that evokes a sense of beauty, hope, and wonder in readers. Tolkien uses it as an antonym for the catastrophe that traditionally ends a tragedy.

ORGANIC UNITY: An idea common to Romantic poetry and influential up through the time of the New Critics in the twentieth century, the theory of organic unity suggests all elements of a good literary work are interdependent upon each other to create an emotional or intellectual whole. If any one part of the art is removed--whether it is a character, an action, a speech, a description, or authorial observation--the entire work diminishes in potency as a result. The idea also suggests that the growth or development of a piece of good literature--from its beginning to its end--occurs naturally according to an understandable sequence. That sequence may be chronological, logical, or otherwise step-by-step in some productive manner.

More: Writing Notes & References

[postcardsfromheapside]

This is a great post which shows how fans can complain about a "new" thing in Veilguard which actually had precedent in prior games. Which is correct, and good, and there have been many excellent and informed posts in this vein, because so many of you have been making complaints like this because it's either been too long since you played the prior games, or you didn't pay attention, and instead of just *asking*, you got up in your feels about how VG is terrible and now other posters are having to do the heavy lore lifting for you.

I'm begging you.

Stop being "originalists." Things don't have to have appeared in prior games or books in order to be valid in sequels.

Sometimes "universes" introduce new things you never saw in prior iterations of the 'verse. Star Wars is an excellent example of this.

I know Dragon Age has a "big guiding binder" that it works off of, but it is literally okay if another game comes out, and you are suddenly introduced to new details that you never heard before.

Do they seem to work logically/consistently within the DA universe? (don't make bad faith arguments about it) Are there precedents for oddities? Are the new details from a society you haven't encountered before (or only briefly), so you just need to absorb it into your lore encyclopedia? If someone made declarative statements AGAINST the oddities, does that someone have a limited, or unreliable perspective?

Most importantly, remember that worlds can change. Societies and cultures shouldn't be static. Even Tolkien worked linguistic and cultural drift into his writing.

It's really disheartening to me that someone can look at Bellara using a bow, and complain about it instead of saying "wow, that's really neat!!" and imagine how and why that fits into Dalish cultures, especially northern Dalish culture (remember, we're 10 years on and in the north of Thedas, not the south, and clan culture can differ even if they inhabit a similar area of Thedas)

For all this site will say "HEADCANON ACCEPTED" about some of the most inane and ridiculous ideas I've ever seen proposed, a lot of y'all are ruthlessly stubborn about considering what's put forth by professional media creators.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Ok, so normally I just...ignore creators who can't be bothered to include women, LTGBTQIA, and BIPOC authors in Fantasy Book Lists, but today I'm tired and grouchy and this goddamn video pissed me off because it's a vast majority of white dudes and their fantastical man pain. SO. I would like to just toss out some NOT white male fantasy authors because frankly I am *so tired* of white dudes retreading Tolkien and Robert Jordan forever. So let's celebrate some amazing fantasy authors who tend not to make these lists.

I'll give the author (and a book to start with).

- Mercedes Lackey (Arrows of the Queen)

- Tamora Pierce (Sandry's Book)

- Fonda Lee (Jade City)

- India Holton (The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels)

- NE Davenport (The Blood Trials)

- Naomi Novik (His Majesty's Dragon)

- Moniquill Blackgoose (To Shape A Dragon's Breath)

- CE Murphy (Urban Shaman)

- Sue Lynn Tan (Daughter of the Moon Goddess)

- Chloe Gong (These Violent Delights)

- Judy I. Lin (A Magic Steeped in Poison)

- Tasha Suri (The Jasmine Throne)

- Xiran Jay Zhao (Iron Widow)

- Jordan Ifueko (Raybearer)

- Chelsea Abdullah (The Stardust Thief)

- Tracy Deonn (Legendborn)

- Gabi Burton (Sing Me to Sleep)

- Brittany N. Williams (That Self-Same Metal)

- Juliet Marillier (Dreamer's Pool)

- Stephanie Burgis (Scales and Sensibility)

- Allison Saft (A Fragile Enchantment)

- Chloe Neill (The Bright and Breaking Sea)

- Olivia Atwater (Half a Soul)

- Heather Fawcett (Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faerie)

- MA Carrick (The Mask of Mirrors)

- Kristin Cashore (Graceling)

- Marie Brennan (A Natural History of Dragons)

- Maya Ibrahim (The Spice Road)

- HM Long (Dark Water Daughter)

- Aparna Verma (The Phoenix King)

And these are just the ones I can see on my bookshelves by turning my head without moving from my chair. There are DOZENS of others who I apologize for missing and who are absolutely worth reading. If I missed one of your favorites, add it to the list with a reblog, and let's stop defaulting to filling fantasy author lists with white dudes.

[linestyleartwork]

`Yavanna´ -Pencil and watercolor paint 2023 -

My interpretation of Tolkien's Valar 'Yavanna'. 🧝‍🌿T To my great joy, the painting became the official image for the 'Yavanna' entry in the German Tolkien encyclopedia 'Ardapedia'.

(Music in video by frametraxx.de)

[some-pers0n]

WoF fans when the book for third graders that was said several times to be a fun little sidebook with a heavier emphasis on humour turns out to be a fun little sidebook with a heavier emphasis on humour (they are angry that it wasn't a 500 page encyclopedia with such dense worldbuilding that would make Tolkien cry)

[mask131]

William Morris' works (2)

My very first contact with William Morris was through a recent, complete translation/edition of his work "The Well at the World's End". It had a preface by Anne Besson talking about the book, its author, and why it is at the root of the fantasy genre. Here are some highlights from it.

Morris' return to the stage is part of a movement wishing to return to the sources of fantasy. Now that the "big names" of fantasy (Besson mentions Tolkien, Rowling and Martin) have been explored fully and brought to life by many, there is a new interest and curiosity for the ones outside of them. The classical pioneers that are yet still ignored today, like George McDonald or Charles Kinglsey. The other British authors of the early 20th century that Tolkien overshadowed: Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, Hope Mirrlees, even T.H. White. And the parallel fecundity of the American pulp fiction - everybody knows of it Robert Howard for creating Conan, but now is the return of the others - Harold Lamb, Clark Ashton Smith, Abraham Merritt...

According to Anne Besson, William Morris is one of the greatest and most beautiful creators of the "unjustly neglected" literary monuments of early fantasy - and she considers his "The Well at the World's End" to be his masterpiece. Yet Morris is a very unique case, because he was first and foremost a material and visual artist. He was a drawer, a designer, a printer, and this is a part of his career that is still recognized to this day - often people only mention his crafts work, without a single word about the novels he wrote. Even in Encyclopedias of the fantasy, Morris' name often doesn't get a specific article, and is just a mention in either more general talks about the Preraphaelites, or an evocation in the articles of the authors he inspired (Tolkien, Howard, Eddings). This is the dual heritage of Morris - the great authors he inspired, and his carreer as the "Jack of All Arts" [a title Lyon Sprague de Camp gave him in 1974].

William Morris is first and foremost a part of the Confrery of the Preraphaelites, a group which deeply marked the art of England at the end of the 19th century. They had an hyper-realist technique mixed with a proud escapism when it came to selection their subjects ; this made them stand at odds to the abstractions and "progress" of the "modern" engaged art of the time, and as a result they were for a very long time neglected from the History of the Arts, deemed as being just "kitsch". But today, in England and France they have been fully rehabilitated.

William Morris stands proudly alongside the leader of the movement, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his great friend Edward Burne-Jones. They share common aspirations and inspirations, mixing the Primitives of the first Italian Renaissance (of which they recreated the realistic depictions of nature) and the Gothic (of which they admired the "spiritual purity") - the result were idealized Middle-Ages, "made of faith, heroism and purity" (words from Julia Drobinsky. But Morris is more unique as he is, first and foremost, a craftsman, a designer, a decorator - he was the one who inspired the movement "Arts & Craft". He doesn't just dream of a "golden age", he tries to make it real.

Morris designed beautiful items in the hope of raising the aesthetic level of the Victorian productions. He wanted England to find back its traditional, demanding crafts, so that the alliance of the beautiful and the useful could produce, among the creators and the users, the satisfaction of a "work well done". He is mainly famous for his creation of an intertwined-flowers decorative motif which covered a lot of furniture cloth and wallpapers. He also created a printing house dedicated to recreating medieval-like books, not just using vellum or specific inks, but also special fonts and marginalia - between 1891 and 1898 his Kelmscott Press published 54 books, 17 of which were his own creations.

Morris as such echoes our modern concern of fighting against mass-production and standardization, to have more personal, artistic productions, blurring the line between craftsman and designer, offering fluid artistic collaborations. Morris and Co.'s traditional floral motifs were for a very long time associated with "cosy British interiors" but are now all over the world. Morris himself lived by his aesthetic agenda, surrounding himself with his visual and ideological choices - first in his Red House in the South of London (he had a part in its construction), then at Kelmscott Manor, an idyllic countryside retreat near the Thames co-owned with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A lot of rumors and criticism was aimed towards the two men's relationships to one woman - Jane, who was the wife of Morris but the muse of Rossetti. Yet, these "loose morals" denounced at the time were in line with the Preraphaelites' protest against the normalized violence of the Victorian society, a protest that was mainly expressed through an exaltation of a proudly sensual feminity... In The Well at the World's End, this is found in the character of the Lady of Abundance, a third seductive fairy, a third jealousy-inducing witch, a third pagan goddess...

William Morris didn't just print beautiful books, theorized books in his crafting ideology, or collected medieval manuscripts - he also wrote many, many texts. His complete works, gathered by his daughter May, form 24 volumes (plus four volumes of corresponance, plus a hundred of articles and political conferences). And he did all that before dying at 62 years old. To give a few highlights, he started in the 1850s, under the influence of Thomas Malory's La Morte d'Arthur. He published medieval-inspired novellas in "The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine" (notably "The Hollow Land"), and he even decided to have an Arthurian dialogue with Lord Alfred Tennyson, the greatest poet of his time, by publishing in 1858 "The Defense of Guinevere".

Morris' works were a succession and mix of translations, adaptations and re-creations. A good example of this is his work on the Volsung Saga, the great myth of Sigurd that was the source of inspiration for Wagner's operas. Morris first learned Old Norse from an Iceland man named Eirikr Magnusson (who was the key person for the diffusion of Norse culture in the Oxonian circles). He then co-wrote an "archaic" translation: Völsunga Saga - The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, with Certain Songs from the Elder Edda, 1870. Five years later, he offered a vast epic versified rewrite: The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs, 1876. He was very proud of this book.

He also translated various French medieval romances (notably "Ami et Amile" in 1896's Four French romances), and the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf (in 1895). But it is much more relevant to point out how close he was to the Greco-Latin tradition. Outside of a long poem dedicated to Jason (The Life and Death of Jason, 1867), he published a translation of Virgil's Aeneid (1875-76), and one of Homer's Odyssey (1887-88).

Finally, his enormous compilation of 24 narrative poems called "The Earthly Paradise" (3 volumes, 1868-70) was the encounter of his two ancient inspirations : Vikings of the North enter a heavenly otherworld where Ionians survived, and with whom they exchange stories - all to offer a beautiful metaphor on the role of the "transmission of culture".

His writing of "romances" is only a late stage of his production. The Well at the World's End was only published in 1896, the same year as Morris' death - even though it had been written some years earlier. It forms a greater whole alongside "The Story of the Glittering Plain" (1891), "The Wood Beyond the World" (1894), "The Water of the Wondrous Isles" (1897) and "The Sundering Flood" (1897, posthumous work). It is a late but logical development as Amanda Hodgson noted: before that, Morris' work oscillated between the "historical temptations" and the political utopias turned to the future. On one side his historical novel "The House of the Wolflings" in 1880, defending the Northern aristocracies against the Roman invasions ; on the other side his "A Dream of John Ball" about the Middle-Ages confronting the Industial Revolution, or his "News from Nowhere".

These romances, beyond showing the tiredness of the end of a life dedicated to an unflinching political engagement, allow Morris to unite these contrasting aspirations. Their "lightness" and their happy endings glorify the ability of individuals and communities to transform. Through escapist stories, Morris captures the same hope he tries to offers to the people of his time. It is the meaning of the fourth part of "The Well", dedicated to a return to the homeland, during which the hero and his beloved go back through the same places they crossed before and see their evolutions.

It seems every aspect of Morris' life lead to these romances. They feed on his nature as a scholar in literary and languages, they feed from his passion for Arthurian romances and Medieval chansons de geste ; they are born from his interests for myths, epics, fairytales and folklore. But they are also very visual productions. Sober yet strongly evocative descriptions through an insistance on color and light ; the use of typical hyperbola and a stylistic unity ; the "chromatic exuberance" through the union of "absolute colors" (yellow, gold, green, blue, scarlet) in a limited palette reminding of the Medieval illuminations... Morris wrote his texts like he painted his images. The very plots, with their constant duality and doubles and counter-points, reminds of the ornamental motifs of the Morris Company.

In the end the "birth of the fantasy" Morris is credited with is no more than the fusion of magnified Middle-Ages with socialist visions of another world more just and more beautiful. Poetic and politically engaged, these romances, through their initiation processes and their rich symbolism, offer questions about self-fulfilment, the formation of a couple, the need to be inserted in a collectivity - while also promoting the values that are loyalty, perseverance, care for desires, and the importance of the community.

Did William Morris invent fantasy? At least this is how he is perceived...

Originally, outside of the publication of Morris' completed works by May Morris, they were very hard to access, only available to the best experts of English literature, until Lin Carter offered them a second life in the USA, in the collection "Ballantine Adult Fantasy". We are in the huge wave caused by the success of "The Lord of the Rings" (its pocket-edition of the revised version in 1965). Ballantine Adult Fantasy, the first fantasy collection ever, was created to fulfill the needs of a Tolkien fan, by ambitiously reprinting all of the "classics". Lord Dunsany, George McDonald, George Meredith and... William Morris. In five years four of his books were re-published, starting with "The Wood" in 1969, and "The Well" in two volumes in 1970. Lin Carter is also a very fascinating name when it comes to the fantasy world, very divisive. On the "light side", Carter is remember as a scholar and lover of fantasy who maintained and enhanced the genre ; on the "dark side", Carter is recalled as a mediocre author and a shady editor, hated by fans of Tolkien and Robert Howard for shaping and exploiting a twisted version of their works...

It is under the pen of Carter that Morris' romances earned their title of "origins of fantasy". Carter presented them as such: "From the world of the "Wood" and the world of the "Well" descend all of the later worlds of fantastic literature, Poictesme, and Oz and Tormance, Barsoom and Narnia and Zothique, Gormenghast and Zimiamvia and Middle-Earth. When he sketched out the map of those imagined realms which lie between Upmeads and Utterbol, William Morris blazed the first trail into the unexplored universe of fantasy".

But Ballantine's Morris can be seen as almost a betrayal of the original spirit... It implies a new genealogy, a new target-audience, and a new interpretation. His romances are not part of a complete architectural unit. The American audience split them away from the rest of Morris work, differentiate the author from the artist. Yet, it was widely recognized at the time that the first English fantasy and artistic theories were closely linked... George MacDonald, the author of "Phantastes" and "The Princess and the goblin" was a friend of John Ruskin, an influent art theorician, whose texts were for Morris (just like for Proust) a massive revelation... Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the most famous of the Preraphaelites, belonged to a family of artists: his sister, Christina Rossetti, was a figure-head of a darker Victorian fantasy, with her poems (Goblin Market) or her Lewis Carroll-like fairytales (Speaking Likenesses).

The reason so many of these early names rarely reached us is because of the huge meteorite that crashed on the "fantasy land" - named Tolkien. A meteorite that changed forever the "fantastic ecosystem" - after him, all fantasy works shall be compared to Tolkien and no one else. It is unfair, but it is so. Anne Besson highlights how her work edition for writing this preface was a 2003's publication by the Inkling Books which claimed would "give back Morris to the people" and yet systematically and heavily referred to him as "the author who influenced Tokien". The editor, Michael W. Perry, seemed to strongly imply that the only reason Morris' Well deserved to be read, was because of its association with Tolkien. The first lines are: "On the lines of Morris's romances, two books that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien, The Wood beyond the world and The Well at the world's end, by William Morris". Tolkien's full name comes before Morris' own full name! And the introduction, titled "William Morris and J.R.R. Tolkien" is entirely about what Tolkien found in Morris for his own works... And the dedication is "For the fans of Tolkien who are wishing for books like the Lord of the Rings".

Despite everybody linking Morris to Tolkien, his influence is more relevant in th case of C.S. Lewis, who was very enthusiastic about the author and wrote a beautiful presentation of him in his 1939's "Rehabilitations". Tolkien's inspiration was there, though lesser and smaller... He mostly took broad elements (a hieratic style, a Medieval Northern Europe setting, a discreet ambiant magic) and punctual details (the malevolent Gandolf and the Silverfax horse of Morris predate Tolkien's Gandalf and Shadowfax). Tolkien did write that the Dead Marshes were more directly influenced by Morris' romances. And to this list of influences can be added two more things. One, the importance of the "return" of the characters - the story doesn't end with the quest, the characters have to go home. Two, the image of the dead tree brought back to life - brought back to life by the heroes' return, by the return of a vital harmony, of a just government. For Tolkien it is Gondor's White Tree, for Morris it is the Dry Tree, the opposite of both the Well with its waters of life and of the arms of Upmeads, a fruit-bearing apple-tree by a river.

To read "retrospectively" Morris as just another fantasy author, or as in the line of posterior creations, is thus for Anne Besson a big mistake, because Morris, who wrote at the very dawn of a new genre, is very "original" in his work compared to what is expected of a fantasy today, and what might seem in the context of modern fantasy as "naive" or "blinded" was very fresh, very troubling, very "primordial" in the light of the end of a life-time of social fighting alongside the poor and the victims of misery an injustice.

And it is not because Morris' work is great, or a classic, or very influential on modern works, that it means it is easy to read today. While the text feels simple, fresh, fluid, it is a false sense that is quickly broken down by how unfamiliar modern audiances will be with the content of the book. The book has a very ambivalent "moral system", where it is hard to discern what is good an what is evil - exemplified by the troubling relationship between religion and magic in this fictional universe. It is a work done in a style purposefully archaic, avoiding Latin-derived words to search for a purely English language paying homage to its Nordic roots. It is also a work with the traditional "flatness" of the medieval romances and illustrations: everybody happens on the same plane, there is no pause, no acme, everybody speaks the same way, and the same episodes return over and over again.

However as C.S. Lewis wrote, while Morris' style is very artificial, it shall be praised for being very simple, very obvious, very clear, "more so than any "natural" style could be". It is a form of stylistic sobriety that invites to see beyond the words. Morris' stories don't have a "set", a "stage" or a "decorum", they have a geography. Morris makes sure the reader can "breathe the air" of the mountains they read about. Morris started there this ideal that all fantasy authors seeks to reach, the same ideal that Tolkien popularized - but when Tolkien talks of the "tales of Faërie", he seems to be echoing and evoking the texts of William Morris. Simple, fundamental stories filled with light, that invite to look at things like everyday colors and rediscover them, and that get rid of banality and familiarity to literally "possess" the reader.

Anne Besson concludes by claiming Morris IS the Well which all the 1930s-onward fantasy authors drank from, as well as the more distant source of the flow of "new fantasy" of the 70s.

[azrael-the-lucifan]

There’s two people on tiktok who’s video about rings of power keep coming up on my feed. One is positive while still criticizing the aspects she doesn’t agree with. This girl is an encyclopedia of Tolkien. She’s having fun, she’s vibing. She finds parts of the lore that explain things in the show people complain about.

Then the other person is bashing the show left, right, and centre. They also seem to know a great deal about Tolkien but from what I can tell they very much seem like someone who has unconsciously let some of their headcanons take over or just create bias. They also said the guy who plays Sauron isn’t handsome enough?? Like, mate, are we watching the same show? He is quite handsome. He’s not my type, but he is still very handsome. Like, yeah, I can see how people would become enamoured with him. Just cuz he’s not your ideal beauty standard doesn’t mean he’s not good looking enough to play Sauron.

[vessels-two-front-teeth]

+18 only! Minors do not interact.

Introduction post!

Masterlist(story is temporarily made private. Just until I have a better handle on my mental health. Yes this means the story is on a hiatus for a little while longer.)

Sleep Token Portrait Masterpost

Apple Cider Blondies recipe

Hot Apple Cider recipe

I now stream on twitch every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1PM PST. Join me while I paint things!

I have a side blog. It’s much darker than this. I talk about the things that I don’t talk about here, but in the form of creative ish writing. World events and such. Follow if you wish.

All under age, ageless, and blank blogs will be blocked on sight. Credit to @/teloomeres on TikTok for my icon. I’m on discord too. If we’re moots you can dm me and ask.

I’m Sid. I am 29 years old. I’m non-binary, trans masc, and pansexual. They/he pronouns. Canadian. I am autistic and have ADHD and CPTSD. Happily engaged. I am currently just trying to do my fucking best.

Tags and additional information under the cut ⬇️

My art tags: [#vtft art tour] is where you’ll find all of my non-fandom related art posts. [#vtft fan art] is where you’ll find all of my fan art. [#Sid’s photography] is where you’ll find all the pictures I have taken. [#Sid’s writing] is where you’ll find all of my non-fandom related writing. [Sid’s recipes] is where you’ll find all of my original recipes.

My Sleep Token lore theory tag: [#vtft lore theory]

Announcements, random talking, etc. tags: [#Sid talks to themselves, babbles, Sid becomes an encyclopedia, Sid’s twitch announcement]

Ask box open/closed: [#Sid wants asks, Sid does not want asks] wants = open. Does not want = closed.

Mental health journey: [#✨into the thick of it✨] piecing my mental health back together after a multiple month long mental breakdown.

Other tags: SPACE, SCIENCE, THE MOON, THE STARS, NATURE, LOTR, TOLKIEN

Answering asks: hiiii [insert name]

Friend tags: these will evolve over time, that’s a guarantee. If any of you don’t like your tags, let me know and I can definitely change them.

@elkkiel : fuckin buddy over here, beans the magnificent

@thewayyoulay : secret agent youlay

@pastlivesxpastlie : 4eral 4 4riends

@frothingatthemaw : kitty, magpie, maw and co

@gestureintongues : hot chocolate fiend

@galaxy-tacos : intergalactic snack foods

@ghostkingart / @ixvessel : the jax of all friends

@shatterthefragments : apple cider fiend

@wishicoulddisappear / @sabe-amidala : birds of a feather

Sleep token category tags:

III: [#bassy boi, the chaos ballerina, fancy vampire man, evil clown man, mad scientist, grim reaper] all tags referring to III. Bassy boi as well as the default [#sleep token iii] are for generic III pics. The chaos ballerina is for any pics where he’s being particularly…well chaotic. Fancy vampire man is for all pics where he’s dressed as a fancy vampire man. Evil clown man is pics where he looks like he’s about to murder the shit outta someone. Mad scientist is for all the pics where he looks like he held onto an electric fence for about 5 seconds too long. Grim reaper is for pics/vids where he’s wearing The Cardigan™️.

IV: [#sir numerals/pinstripe/sparkles the fourth] all tags referring to IV. [sleep token iv] is the default. Numerals/pinstripe/sparkles referring to different outfits and/or eras.

II: [#lemon boi, pocket king, mini evil clown man] all tags referring to II. Lemon boi is the default, as well as [#sleep token ii] for generic pics. Ones where you can see how smol he is get pocket king. Mini evil clown man is when he’s doing the thing that iii does, where he looks like he’s about to murder the fuck outta someone. But make it smaller.

Vessel: [#sleep token vessel] is default. [#the ski-daddler on the roof] is for posts where he’s doing something chaotic or just silly on stage. [#the eldritch noodle man strikes again] is for when he looks like an absolute cryptid (affectionate).[#(emotion) poetry man] for posts that show vessels different emotions. Example: sad poetry man, angry poetry man, happy poetry man, etc. [#the porcelain mask] think “a mask tells us more than a face.” Saved for magazine shoots. [#happy smily boy, vessels two front teeth, teeth appreciation] are all for posts where he’s either smiling or showing teeth in general. Thank you 🪽⚫️ for your help with these, I appreciate you.

Espera: [#the goddesses, sleep token espera] tags referring to…you guessed it, the espera. They remind me of the triple goddesses, so yeah.

Miscellaneous: [#the boifrienns, smooches, cutie patootie(s)] posts where the boys are being affectionate towards each other…in various ways. Use your imagination.

Now for some additional information about this blog and my goals with it.

Yes this is a Sleep Token themed blog, but I listen to a very wide range of music, like almost all genres. The only songs I don’t like are ones that are objectively bad.

I am currently working on my debut novel, and I just started my very first fanfiction, In The Low Light. I like space and science, spirituality and history of different religions, as well as history in general, and psychology. Just a general rule of thumb, I’m a fucking nerd. There’s a lot going on up here in this brain mush of mine.

As for stuff about Sleep Token, their identities will not be discussed here. If you send me anything with their information, I will delete it and block you. I do know their information, unfortunately, because I was jump scared in the comments of a TikTok and now it’s burned into my brain. I will not post about it. Ever.

I found Sleep Token through The Summoning in January 2023 when it went viral. Almost instantly, they became my favourite band of all time.

As for my plans for this page, I will continue to complete the mask portraits for Sleep Token, in the order shown below. Other than that, my goal is to keep this page as free from political subject matter as possible. I want this page to be an escape for everyone, myself included. I will try my best to keep it light hearted and fun.

I will go in order as follows:

1. IV

2. III

3. II

4. Vessel

5. The Espera

Each painting will include their mask in the centre, surrounded by flowers/plants that I have selected based on their symbology. With each painting, I will be counting the total number of hours spent on each one and will go in instalments until each is completed.

I may in the future do portraits of other artists, though at the moment the only ones I have solid plans for are Sleep Token. There are other art ideas that are related to ST, but are essentially (free) commissions for friends. If there is enough demand/interest, I may in the future sell digital prints of my art, however this is dependent on your interest levels.

I do not consent to the sharing, reposting or plagiarism of any of my original works on any outside platforms or social media. If you see my works tell me so I can look into it.

All in all, I am excited to be working on this project and to make friends with all of you lovely people.

As long as we keep the focus on the love of the music, and respecting the boys and each other, I know that this will only become a beautiful thing.

Thank you for joining me on this journey, I love you all.

WORSHIP ❤️🖤🤍