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A practice in imperfection: forcing myself to post an unfinished drawing of Elros and Elrond looking at the star of Eärendil, based on Caspar David Friedrich's "Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon". The ink splatter landed right on the star, which I think probably has a metaphor in it somewhere. Something about fathers who exist somewhere but not with you. Something about ships and wings and blank spaces in your memory that even a star can't fill. Idk.

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What is that thing? He’s a morph. I rescued the little shapeshifter on Proteus I. Aw, he took a shine to me. We been together ever since.

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I cannot stand the parodies of modern major general, they're overdone and simply not as good as the original. They've done them about everything, whatever topic, big or small.

And when i notice one of them my eyes will always start to roll.

The diction's always slurry when they rush the complicated words, and adding many fricatives will turn it so cacophonous. The slanted rhymes are silly and they keep just making more and more, please someone stop the parodies of modern major general.

The scanning of the lyrics in the meter is unbearable, they emphazise the syllables in ways that are untenable, in short in matters musical, prosodic and ephemeral, i cannot stand the parodies of modern major general!

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Eowyn in Gondor Headcanons

There's a popular trend in fanfiction to present Eowyn as a fish out of water in Gondor, a wild and free-natured Shieldmaiden of Rohan, stuck with stuffy, stuck up Gondorians. Sometimes this is softened by having Emyn Arnen, Eowyn and Faramir's home in Ithilien, be more easy and relaxed, somewhere where Eowyn can indulge her "wildness", unlike stone Minas Tirith.

Whereas Gondorian pride is a thing, and Eowyn herself jokingly describes herself as being "a wild shieldmaiden of the North" who Gondorians might say Faramir "tamed", it is worth pointing out that after the war, Gondor had both dwarves and elves turn up and play active parts in the society, the hobbits come and visit, and Aragorn, the new king, is someone who has mixed with and forged bonds with people of different races and communities.

Therefore, while it's not improbable that there were the odd culture clashes with "stuffy Gondorians", Eowyn, on marrying Faramir, would be far from a lone fish out of water. Following the war, Minas Tirith was a melting pot of different cultures and races, all leaving their mark, and mixing with the highest members of Gondorian nobility, the king himself being friends with elves, dwarves and hobbits.

Another thing to consider is that at the time of marrying Faramir, Eowyn wasn't unknown to Gondor.

Eowyn slew the Witch King and played a massive part in saving the city. When Eowyn and Theoden were carried from the battle field, the people of Gondor stopped in the streets to pay their respects, and when the Rohirrim left after the war, they were cheered and hailed. Whereas memory and gratitude can be short, and therefore it would not be unrealistic that certain parties in Gondor forget what they owe Eowyn and Rohan, at least enough to show some snobbery, it is also to be expected that Eowyn receives a lot of goodwill from the people of Gondor.

It is that goodwill which Tolkien focusses on, and Eowyn's deeds (and probably her romance with Faramir, who was deeply beloved by the people) would have won her a lot of credit with the people of Gondor.

The mixing of cultures and people in Minas Tirith also suggests that far from everything in Minas Tirith being excruciatingly rigid and strict, Minas Tirith would have had a lot of variety, lots of different people with different customs and behaviour all coming together. Everything Tolkien writes indicates Minas Tirith to have been a happy place after the war, vibrant and welcoming to many different people.

Therefore, if Eowyn did at times clash with people who looked down on her Rohirric roots, perhaps Gondorian nobles and courtiers, this would not have been her experiences with everyone in Minas Tirith, but personal conflicts between individuals. And she would not have been the only prominent inhabitant of the city at the time to be doing so.

The concept of Eowyn struggling in a stone city, after the "freedom of Rohan", also misses the fact that Eowyn was not free in Rohan. Not for many years. Theoden's dotage, her duties in Meduseld, Grima's influence, the war she was forbidden to partake in, all made Eowyn feel caged in Rohan, these restrictions inflicted on Eowyn we see in how at the beginning of her arc, Eowyn's every act is dictated to her, whereas after falling in love with Faramir, Eowyn's choices and personal will is at the centre of her actions. Faramir, we see, never tries to control Eowyn's actions, and as her husband, he would be the only person who would have the authority to do so.

Eowyn's childhood, we can speculate, was more free in Rohan than it would have been in Gondor, allowing Eowyn to train as a shieldmaiden, but during the war, Rohan offered little freedom to her, and post war, there's no indication that Gondor would have denied her any.

Perhaps then, we can imagine Eowyn coming to Minas Tirith after her wedding, perhaps for an official welcome and celebrations to Gondor (as an important political match between Rohan and Gondor, there would most likely have been celebrations to mark Eowyn's arrival), Eowyn doesn't struggle so much from a lack of freedom, but a sudden excess of it.

In Edoras, apart from the coming and going of soldiers and perhaps the odd traveller, Eowyn would have been seeing the same people every day, and almost all of them would have been from Rohan, people perhaps she knew from childhood, and Eowyn's role in Rohan has been defined for a long time. She was the chatelaine, the one who held the fort while everyone else was gone, and she took charge of the domestic duties.

Everyone knew her and Eowyn knew everyone, and everything expected of her. This, we know, made Eowyn feel trapped and caged, but humans by nature are comfortable with the known, so the sudden shift for Eowyn between being Lady of Meduseld, which would have been familiar as an old shoe, to being Princess of Ithilien, with a new role and a new life to build, might well have been overwhelming or disorientating, even if she relished the opportunity to do something else.

Eowyn married Faramir a year after the war, so by this time, Minas Tirith might be in the midst of rebuilding, and already filled with elves and dwarves, bringing their cultures and mixing things up a bit. The people would by now perhaps be ready to celebrate and have fun, and Faramir and Eowyn's wedding would have been a good opportunity for that. So we can definitely imagine Eowyn being greeted to Minas Tirith with a lot of fun and festivities, filled with lots of new people from lots of new places. This would have been exhilarating and thrilling, but also overwhelming, and a stark contrast to the familiarity and certainty of Rohan.

Here my love for the 1920s seeps in, and I almost envision Eowyn as a girl from a rural community coming up to London or Paris during the Roaring Twenties, cities undergoing big social shifts and filled with new thoughts, fashions, music and ways of having fun. And Eowyn, caged, confined, a natural rebel forced to repress her exuberance for many years, now with a new lease on life, throwing herself into everything.

(and here my head canon for Eowyn's wedding celebrations ends with Eowyn, having enjoyed a week of intense celebrations and festivities in Minas Tirith, following the wedding in Rohan, retreating to Emyn Arnen with the Middle Earth equivalent of fresher's flu, spending her first few days in the marital nest in a dark room, blowing her nose and cursing the sun for being too bright).

Therefore, I don't see Minas Tirith as a cold, strict, stuffy city (perhaps before the war, but not after), but a thriving and exciting place to be, cosmopolitan and filled with life, where Eowyn enjoys going to visit. Emyn Arnen remains her main residence, her youth in Rohan leaving her with a definite preference for more rural environments for day to day life, but Eowyn does enjoy coming to stay or visit Minas Tirith, mixing with Aragorn and Arwen and any of the Fellowship who happens to be visiting, and enjoying all the opportunities that big cities have to offer. And she loves visiting Rohan too, staying with Eomer, going back to their old childhood haunts and galloping across the plains. Rohan is only three days away, very doable for a capable horsewoman. If at any point Eowyn did start pining for the Mark, for its traditions, wild landscape and familiar people, then it wouldn't have required excessive planning for Eowyn to choose a date to hop on a horse and go.

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Today i finished watching the lotr trilogy with two of my closest friends who coerced me into going to see the re-screening of first one last sunday and then had to face the consequences of their actions by going with me again to watch the 2nd and 3rd one thw days following because i couldn't believe I've been missing out on these movies my whole life up until 3 days ago. NO IDC THE BOOKS ARW BETTER CAUSE I HAVENT READ THE BOOKS AND IGNORANCE IS BLISS SO YEAH I LOVED THE MOVIES heres some doodles

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when they're paying minimum wage and their list of requirements is two pages long.

the thing about job searching is i see all these job postings and im like i dont wanna do any of this for any of you

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spoiler free thoughts on sunrise on the reaping:

it’s a 10/10 read but what the hell and damn and fuck

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CLAUDIA JESSIE as ELOISE BRIDGERTON BRIDGERTON 3.08 – Into the Light

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My poor babies, my poor heart 💔

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Harrison Ford hating playing Han Solo made him better at playing Han Solo because Han Solo did not want to be there doing those things either.

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That looks like the red top she wore in TKKS. Gwen sitting silently, musing on Suzie's plight, plotting to break her out? Gwen post TKKS, musing on how close she came to death, remembering what it was like to be dead.

18/03

#burtonsdailydoodles 7️⃣7️⃣

Couldn’t decide which I preferred…

INSTAGRAM

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18/03

#burtonsdailydoodles 7️⃣7️⃣

Couldn’t decide which I preferred…

INSTAGRAM

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Little Women (1994) dir. Gillian Armstrong

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Gown, late 1770s

The John Bright Collection

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Some of my favorite underappreciated/often unmentioned canon things in Persuasion:

Lady Russell starts to love Captain Wentworth like her own son: “[She] found little hardship in attaching herself as a mother to the man who was securing the happiness of her other child.”

By the end of the novel, Anne and Captain Harville have grown so close that they see each other as brother and sister, implying that Harville has started to move past the death of Fanny Harville too

When Louisa told Wentworth that Anne turned down Charles Musgrove’s marriage proposal, it turns out he subconsciously wondered/hoped that she did it for him: “It was possible that you [Anne] might retain the feelings of the past, as I [Wentworth] did; and one encouragement happened to be mine. I could never doubt that you would be loved and sought by others, but I knew to a certainty that you had refused one man at least, of better pretensions than myself; and I could not help often saying, ‘Was this for me?’”

When Anne and Wentworth sneak off at the end to talk to each other, it’s with the excuse of “each apparently occupied in admiring a fine display of green-house plants”

After Wentworth rescues Anne from the toddler and starts playing with him, Charles Hayter gets salty because he feels bad about sitting on his ass: “[Anne] had a strong impression of [Charles Hayter] having said, in a vext tone of voice, after Captain Wentworth’s interference, ‘You ought to have minded me, Walter; I told you not to teaze your aunt;’ and could comprehend his regretting that Captain Wentworth should do what he ought to have done himself.”

On that note - right before that scene, Wentworth tries to make distantly polite small talk with Anne and she doesn’t reply lmao: “He continued at the window; and after calmly and politely saying, ‘I hope the little boy is better,’ was silent. She was obliged to kneel down by the sofa, and remain there to satisfy her patient.”

Sophia Croft holds grudges on behalf of her loved ones: “If you look across the street, you will see Admiral Brand coming down and his brother. Shabby fellows, both of them! I [Admiral Croft] am glad they are not on this side of the way. Sophy cannot bear them. They played me a pitiful trick once.”

Back when he was the curate of Monkford, Edward Wentworth managed to reach “an amicable compromise” with a robber who was stealing apples from his orchard instead of attempting to enforce any legal consequences

Anne decides that even though the Musgrove sisters are young, lively, and very close (whereas Anne has strained relationships with Mary and Elizabeth), she doesn’t envy them because she’s more intelligent

Captain Benwick and Charles Mugrove went rat-hunting in the Musgroves’ barn together and became total bros

At the end of the book Charles Musgrove basically says screw the upper classes (“Don’t talk to me about heirs and representatives,” cried Charles. “I am not one of those who neglect the reigning power to bow to the rising sun. If I would not go for the sake of your father, I should think it scandalous to go for the sake of his heir. What is Mr. Elliot to me?”)

Wentworth then immediately turns to Anne like that L looking at Light meme to see if she agrees: “The careless expression was life to Anne, who saw that Captain Wentworth was all attention, looking and listening with his whole soul; and that the last words brought his enquiring eyes from Charles to herself.”

Mr. Elliot indirectly proposes to Anne but she ignores him because she’s too busy listening to her father call Wentworth hot: “Such she believed were his words; but scarcely had she received their sound, than her attention was caught by other sounds immediately behind her, which rendered every thing else trivial. Her father and Lady Dalrymple were speaking. ‘A well-looking man,’ said Sir Walter, ‘a very well-looking man.’ ‘A very fine young man indeed!’ said Lady Dalrymple. ‘More air than one often sees in Bath.’”

Wentworth brought an extra umbrella to Bath because he came to town explicitly hoping to take a romantic walk in the rain with Anne

Both Anne and Wentworth are well-spoken and can talk gently and reassuringly when another person is upset: When Mrs. Musgrove was sad about her son: “[Wentworth] was perfectly collected and serious; and almost instantly afterwards… entered into conversation with her, in a low voice, about her son, doing it with so much sympathy and natural grace, as shewed the kindest consideration for all that was real and unabsurd in the parent’s feelings” When Wentworth was sad at the concert: “Anne replied, and spoke in defense of the performance so well, and yet in allowance for his feelings, so pleasantly, that his countenance improved, and he replied again with almost a smile. They talked for a few minutes more; the improvement held; he even looked down towards the bench, as if he saw a place on it well worth occupying;”

The reasons why Sir Walter approves of Anne’s marriage are not only that Wentworth is hot and rich, but also because he has a “well-sounding name”

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FILMS IN 2025: 02. Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998)