My BIGGEST pet peeve when it comes to Tolkien is how people will sometimes characterize Melkor’s rebellion as being about him wanting to do his own thing and rebelling against Illuvatar’s oppressive sheet music.

THERE WAS NO SHEET MUSIC!  Illuvatar wasn’t forcing anything.  The Ainulindale was improv.  Illuvatar just gave them the theme, the idea, the feeling, the starting point.  The Ainur were drawing inspiration from the thought of Illuvatar, sure, and so long as they were in harmony the music played precisely as Illuvatar intended because Illuvatar had created them and knew how they worked together.  But the music of the Ainur before Melkor’s dissonance was quintessentially creative, as well as corroborative.  It was spontaneous, perfect harmony of free individuals perfectly in tune with each other, whose improvisations were constantly building upon each other.

Melkor’s rebellion was not about asserting his freedom of expression, because his expression was already free.  Instead it was explicitly about making his own voice louder and more important than anyone else’s, and subjugating the creativity of others to instead convince or force them to follow him exactly in repetitive unison.  And so, when Melkor’s goal became drown everyone else out, instead of make beautiful music together, his music became less creative, less innovative, and less his.

So it kind of annoys me when people talk about Melkor like he’s all for freedom of expression when he’s pretty much the opposite of that.

I love how the three kinds of notes to this post are:

For that matter - from this post and from one or two others I’ve seen concerning orchestras and choirs, I’m beginning to gather it’s a marvel we don’t hear about murders happening during practice sessions, which is certainly something I would not have expected to learn.

See this. I really want to know what is going on in orchestras…

(unfortunately the best band-themed addition to this post has also disappeared somehow…)

(also see: the famed beef between altos and sopranos)

The altos are just jealous that I can scream for three minutes without needing to draw breath and that the piercing train-whistle quality of my voice drowns out whatever they’re doing.

Sci-fi show: There's no religion in the future. Mankind has evolved beyond such silly superstitions.

Me: But that woman's in hijab. And that woman has a bindi!

Sci-fi show: Yes, in this utopian future, mankind is tolerant and inclusive of all diversity.

Me: ...so Arabs and Indians are less evolved than whites, who are smart enough to have become atheists?

Sci-fi show:

They just dont see them as religion, but funny halloween-ish costumes that non-whites wear daily.

Like thats why the whole "try a hijab for a day" thing exist. They would never try wearing a cross or a kippah for a day. Bc they get that that is religious stuff.

But hijabs are just little costumes for when you draw your brown (and fat, for some reason its almost always also fat) female character for the current tv show. To show how brown she is. Not religion.

One of the best shot of Total Solar Eclipse from 08-04-2024.

Via @nasa-official

oh WOW

Windin up that kamehameha

“What big ears you have!” “All the better to smell you with.”

moths are gothic butterflies <3

domestic silk moth (bombyx mori) | source

Luna moth and death head moth

i would have booped you my brother, my captain, my king

Artist: Madoka Oomori of the circle Pale Lilac (she was the former assistant of Naoko Takeuchi, hence why their styles are so similar and why her doujinshi can be considered semi-official!)

Scanned by: Me

it’s just hard not to think about the fact that in 1915, JRR Tolkien went to war not with but certainly in the same army and many of the same battles as his 3 best school friends, all nicely upper class young men who had never known much loss, and only he and one other came back alive - and a couple decades later, he wrote a book in which 3 nicely upper class young men (and one very excellent gardener) who have never known much loss go to war together, or at least they start out together, and they all come home alive. (Though one cannot bear it, and does not stay.)

What more it wasn’t just losing his friends, he was a commanding officer of a battalion of working class men. All farmers and miners from the same area of Lancashire. He felt affinity for them, but wasn’t allowed to socialize between the ranks due to military protocol and he hated it. 

 "The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."

I don’t think it was even 6 months later that he contracted trench fever and was sent home. 

His entire command was wiped out in one charge shortly after, the majority of a whole countryside’s youths slaughtered while he survived. Youths who were brave and steadfast, but thought of as lesser than their superior officers while still being the ones carrying the actual battle. Youths who deserved fellowship, respect, and above all to go home and dance with their own Rosie.

“My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself”. 

TRIES NOT TO CRY

There is a reason Frodo, who represents the English gentry, in the end falls and is caught by Samwise, who represents the common man.

But there is a soldier in Lord of the Rings who does not come back, and I don’t mean Boromir.

I mean the being who was a common hobbit, but who became corrupted by darkness and poison, who’s face is described in ways reminiscent of a gas mask.

The soldier who doesn’t come home, who is poisoned by gas and stress and insanity.

Is Gollum.

M'aiq's favorite is Sheogorath