Peregrinations

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS

OMG

This one’s an always-reblog, because who knows who needs it and hasn’t seen it yet?

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS

OMG

This one’s an always-reblog, because who knows who needs it and hasn’t seen it yet?

YOOOOOOO

This is both very beautiful and highly entertaining.

Sonnet: Against Entropy

John M. Ford

The worm drives helically through the wood And does not know the dust left in the bore Once made the table integral and good; And suddenly the crystal hits the floor. Electrons find their paths in subtle ways, A massless eddy in a trail of smoke; The names of lovers, light of other days Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke. The universe winds down. That's how it's made. But memory is everything to lose; Although some of the colors have to fade, Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose. Regret, by definition, comes too late; Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

the fact that we only have “herculean task” and “sisyphean task” feels so limiting. so here’s a few more tasks for your repertoire

feel free to chime in i ran out of ideas much faster than i anticipated

Promethean task: opposite of a Cassandraean task. You have the right information, and SOMEONE has to share it. But it's all in the delivery and if you're the person to identify the problem you WILL be hated forever.

Oedipal Task: (1) Attempting to avoid an unspeakably awful outcome and in doing so creating the circumstances that will bring it about. (2) Trying to solve an problem and discovering that you are in fact the problem you are trying to solve.

So, so, so true

Lol! I like it, concept delightedly accepted.

Istarlindalë: Fic by @lferion; Art by @anerea-lantiria For @tolkienrsb 2023

Fic Rating: G; Art Rating: G Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Silmarillion & other histories | Lord of the Rings Characters: Gandalf | Mithrandir, Saruman | Curunír, Radagast | Aiwendil, Alatar | Rómestámo, Pallando | Morinehtar, (Blue Wizards | Ithryn Luin, Ainur, Maia | Maiar) Additional Tags: Wizards, Written in the style of the Ainulindalë and the Silmarillion, Valinor, Middle Earth, Worldbuilding, Canon-Typical Violence, Music, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Art Word Count: 12,000

Summary: The song of the wise, the knowing ones, from the First Music to the Fourth Age. A poetic exploration of the five Maiar who became the Wizards of Middle-earth, their deeds known and unknown, roles sung and unsung in events through the Ages.

After being carried along in a swirl of poetic words, colours, ideas, adventures and feels as @lferion brought this astounding creation to life, I am absolutely stoked to finally be able to share it so you can be carried away too!

I feel utterly spoiled and honoured that she's created this from my art, and I'm immensely grateful for all the thought and energy she's put into it.

Now go read and enjoy!!

Anerea’s art is soooo beautiful, ant it was such a pleasure working with her on this!

!!!!!!!!!

That particular disappointment of the more literate-than-average child upon discovering that “gaol” is just pronounced “jail”

no thoughts only hcs of characters falling asleep easily around people they trust

Fingon the one who finds sleep hard, and Maedhros, who can sleep lightly/medium anywhere, sleep best & most easily with each other.

So here's one of the coolest things that has happened to me as a Tolkien nut and an amateur medievalist. It's also impacted my view of the way Tolkien writes women. Here's Carl Stephenson in MEDIEVAL FEUDALISM, explaining the roots of the ceremony of knighthood: "In the second century after Christ the Roman historian Tacitus wrote an essay which he called Germania, and which has remained justly famous. He declares that the Germans, though divided into numerous tribes, constitute a single people characterised by common traits and a common mode of life. The typical German is a warrior. [...] Except when armed, they perform no business, either private or public. But it is not their custom that any one should assume arms without the formal approval of the tribe. Before the assembly the youth receives a shield and spear from his father, some other relative, or one of the chief men, and this gift corresponds to the toga virilis among the Romans--making him a citizen rather than a member of a household" (pp 2-3). Got it?

Remember how Tolkien was a medievalist who based his Rohirrim on Anglo-Saxon England, which came from those Germanic tribes Tacitus was talking about? Stephenson argues that the customs described by Tacitus continued into the early middle ages eventually giving rise to the medieval feudal system. One of these customs was the gift of arms, which transformed into the ceremony of knighthood: "Tacitus, it will be remembered, describes the ancient German custom by which a youth was presented with a shield and a spear to mark his attainment of man's estate. What seems to the be same ceremony reappears under the Carolingians. In 791, we are told, Charlemagne caused Prince Louis to be girded with a sword in celebration of his adolescence; and forty-seven years later Louis in turn decorated his fifteen-year-old son Charles "with the arms of manhood, i.e., a sword." Here, obviously, we may see the origin of the later adoubement, which long remained a formal investiture with arms, or with some one of them as a symbol. Thus the Bayeux Tapestry represents the knighting of Earl Harold by William of Normandy under the legend: Hic Willelmus dedit Haroldo arma (Here William gave arms to Harold). [...] Scores of other examples are to be found in the French chronicles and chansons de geste, which, despite much variation of detail, agree on the essentials. And whatever the derivation of the words, the English expression "dubbing to knighthood" must have been closely related to the French adoubement" (pp 47-48.)

In its simplest form, according to Stephenson, the ceremony of knighthood included "at most the presentation of a sword, a few words of admonition, and the accolade." OK. So what does this have to do with Tolkien and his women? AHAHAHAHA I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED. First of all, let's agree that Tolkien, a medievalist, undoubtedly was aware of all the above. Second, turn with me in your copy of The Lord of the Rings to chapter 6 of The Two Towers, "The King of the Golden Hall", when Theoden and his councillors agree that Eowyn should lead the people while the men are away at war. (This, of course, was something that medieval noblewomen regularly did: one small example is an 1178 letter from a Hospitaller knight serving in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem which records that before marching out to the battle of Montgisard, "We put the defence of the Tower of David and the whole city in the hands of our women".) But in The Lord of the Rings, there's a little ceremony.

"'Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone.' 'It shall be so,' said Theoden. 'Let the heralds announce to the folk that the Lady Eowyn will lead them!' Then the king sat upon a seat before his doors and Eowyn knelt before him and received from him a sword and a fair corselet."

I YELLED when I realised what I was reading right there. You see, the king doesn't just have the heralds announce that Eowyn is in charge. He gives her weapons.

Theoden makes Eowyn a knight of the Riddermark.

Not only that, but I think this is a huge deal for several reasons. That is, Tolkien knew what he was doing here.

From my reading in medieval history, I'm aware of women choosing to fight and bear arms, as well as becoming military leaders while the men are away at some war or as prisoners. What I haven't seen is women actually receiving knighthood. Anyone could fight as a knight if they could afford the (very pricy) horse and armour, and anyone could lead a nation as long as they were accepted by the leaders. But you just don't see women getting knighted like this.

Tolkien therefore chose to write a medieval-coded society, Rohan, where women arguably had greater equality with men than they did in actual medieval societies.

I think that should tell us something about who Tolkien was as a person and how he viewed women - perhaps he didn't write them with equal parity to men (there are undeniably more prominent male characters in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, at least, than female) but compared to the medieval societies that were his life's work, and arguably even compared to the society he lived in, he was remarkably egalitarian.

I think it should also tell us something about the craft of writing fantasy.

No, you don't have to include gut wrenching misogyny and violence against women in order to write "realistic" medieval-inspired fantasy.

Tolkien's fantasy worlds are DEEPLY informed by medieval history to an extent most laypeople will never fully appreciate. The attitudes, the language, the ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESS use of medieval military tactics...heck, even just the way that people travel long distances on foot...all of it is brilliantly medieval.

The fact that Theoden bestows arms on Eowyn is just one tiny detail that is deeply rooted in medieval history. Even though he's giving those arms to a woman in a fantasy land full of elves and hobbits and wizards, it's still a wonderfully historically accurate detail.

Of course, I've ranted before about how misogyny and sexism wasn't actually as bad in medieval times as a lot of people today think. But from the way SOME fantasy authors talk, you'd think that historical accuracy will disappear in a puff of smoke if every woman in the dragon-infested fantasy land isn't being traumatised on the regular.

Tolkien did better. Be like Tolkien.

This is very cool, and I had not picked up on the details here.

Fingon, in valinor after getting out of the hall. 

This really speaks to me.

The Milky Ring : An expanse of cosmic dust, stars and nebulae along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy form a beautiful ring in this projected all-sky view. The creative panorama covers the entire galaxy visible from planet Earth, an ambitious 360 degree mosaic that took two years to complete. Northern hemisphere sites in western China and southern hemisphere sites in New Zealand were used to collect the image data. Like a glowing jewel set in the milky ring, the bulge of the galactic center, is at the very top. Bright planet Jupiter is the beacon just above the central bulge and left of red giant star Antares. Along the plane and almost 180 degrees from the galactic center, at the bottom of the ring is the area around Orion, denizen of the northern hemisphere’s evening winter skies. In this projection the ring of the Milky Way encompasses two notable galaxies in southern skies, the large and small Magellanic clouds. via NASA

A very particular kind of ring ….

Write fanfic for yourself.

Publish fanfic for the rotation of 3-6 people who are devoted readers and will either go feral or leave you very nice words and yell with you about it.

Thank you to those specific mutuals who do this with my work. you don't know how much it means to me :)

This. This this this.

bruh

everything about this… this statue, the choppy waves, the cliffs behind her, the echo, the drumming….. aesthetic

Lyrics in Faroese:

Trøllabundin eri eg eri eg Galdramaður festi meg festi meg Trøllabundin djúpt í míni sál í míni sál Í hjartanum logar brennandi bál brennandi bál

Trøllabundin eri eg eri eg Galdramaður festi meg festi meg Trøllabundin inn í hjartarót í hjartarót Eyga mítt festist har ið galdramaður stóð

English translation:

Spellbound am I, am I The wizard has enchanted me, enchanted me Spellbound deep in my soul, in my soul In my heart burns a smouldering fire, smouldering fire

Spellbound am I, am I The wizard has enchanted me, enchanted me Spellbound in my heart’s root, my heart’s root

Did anyone else just get the shivers? Cuz I’m definitely getting the shivers.

Btdubs, the singer is Eivør Pálsdóttir.

Reblogging again for the haunting wizard lyrics

shoutout to the faroe island for being the only real viking island left

I know the islands are owned by Denmark but this reminds me so much of Iceland

Fun fact this woman is trying to single handedly preserve this kind of singing in her culture by performing and making people aware of it because it’s been fading with time and she’s afraid if she doesn’t spread it it will disappear and be lost to future generations

You can support her here!!

This is incredibly cool.