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its important to do this every time a museum or school thinks this is a good idea

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guys guys. which silmarillion character would suggest eating orcs and balrogs and stuff as a way to survive (i bet balrogs taste good they're literally already cooked)

and which is already an expert in it

#cannibalism #i think both Haleth and orodreth have #pretty much anyone in an acute siege #and of course tuor #and all those scattered remnants of men and elves who remained in later days #Túrin and nienor are wild cards no way to say they haven’t taken little nibbles while in a haze #the important thing is that I don’t think any of them ENJOYED it #orc probably does not taste good! #the only candidates for balrog eating might be ecthelion in a watery victorious impulse #biting down as he drowns #but even then I think he did not like it #bad flavor profile bad smell bad texture #further down in the notes julia tries to compose a numenorean orc eater #and you know those medicinal mummy pills that used to get sold to Europeans? #or how holy mummies show up in tcm? #I think dried orc fills a very similar cachet in later numenorean medicines among the rich and powerful

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narratively I am a fan of romances that don’t ever actually become romances

I don’t mean in an aromantic life partner way, I mean romantic tension that is never resolved or acted upon for whatever reason but by the end it’s clear that both characters experienced the love of their lives without ever acknowledging it as such. but they know. they know.

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*raises hand* i think laios dungeonmeshi’s successor should have to ritually consume him to transfer the kingdom’s protective aura/the Curse/keep the demon forever sealed away. also because it’s what he would have wanted.

#dungeon meshi spoilers #dungeon meshi #laios touden #hazing your adoptive heir with funeral cannibalism is in! it’s hot! rulers love it #maybe it makes coups a little awkward but when aren’t they

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Actually the ideal Beleg should be clad entirely in colors that blend in with the environment (as per his canonical white winter outfit) except his shoes should be bright red poulaines for no understandable reason

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War profiteering but for polycule drama

#modern AU kabru dungeon meshi

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the problem with lothlorien is that 180 days of the year you have to go gently wipe down your house o’ silver wood high in the treetops and it looks like this all over

#lord of the rings #the golden wood baby #two beautiful seasons sparkling spring and mellifluous autumn #powerful slightly divine mallorn pollen just everywhere #the entire fellowship is sobbing and it’s not just because Gandalf is dead #the only ones immune are Legolas (elves do not have immune systems) #and Aragorn (Elrond invented allergy shots) #fortunately it was winter when they got there but boromir still did a fair bit of sneezing from the late blooming flowers

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Tbh? I don't like Paul. I don't want Paul. I understand that Paul serves an important narrative function and that Paul is the best possible ending for Camilla and Palamedes given their situation, personalities, and relationship. However what I really want is for Camilla and Palamedes to attend the ATN wedding as two individual humans and for Pal to be a lightweight who loses his tie in the garden fountain after three drinks and for Camilla to do exactly one shot with the group, keep Gideon from ripping the sleeves off her dress shirt, and absolutely kill it at lawn games during cocktail hour. Since this scenario is a wild tonal mismatch for the series and also Palamedes was already dead, this was unlikely to ever happen. However Paul is the final nail in the coffin for the theoretical existence of this scene and I can't help but resent them for that

#yeah #the locked tomb #you know that quote that’s like #loving someone is mourning a thousand deaths of the person they used to be #Paul is just #palamedes and Camilla speedrunning that #in a new and dramatic way that’s can’t be directly correlated to anything real #but I think two people having catastrophic brain damage and the doctors deciding the solution is to Frankenstein their brains together #comes closest #because like with a stroke the brain #the soul—it rewires in very weird ways #sometimes someone comes out of a strokes with a completely different taste in food or a little blind spot in one eye #or more impulsiveness #they have to discover who to be again #but the history is still there you can always recognize the foundations of the project no matter how much is stripped away #Paul is discovering who they are! someone very sharp and a bit more free spirited #kind of a troll kind of full of themself #and underneath that is something steady and bedrock solid that cam and pal held in common #the unchanging loyal devoted core of them #they’ve always been twins in that regard their love needs no compromise #‘Will she still recognize us in the river?’ I think she’d recognize them the way you recognize a friend #who has grown over the years into someone more #because all people do that sooner or later—it’s just a matter of time— #but a glimmer persists that you would know even if they changed their name or dyed their hair or #did a soul blend with their equally beloved cousin #the next time Paul sees dulcinea she will be transformed too #there is a grief to Paul and there is a joy #they’re like a baby in that way and pretty much no other

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Absolutely gorgeous art of Morwen and Aerin that the wonderful @carlandrea made for me! Thank you so much for putting my indecisive hazy mental scenes into extraordinary art. The light in this is unbelievably cool!! And their clothes are exactly how I imagine them,

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#following up with winepresswrath if Miley Cyrus isn’t in the Greenwood she’s in one of the fun parts of lothlorien #who’s that chick that’s rocking kicks but it’s beleg’s bright red boots

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mom says it's Cel's turn with the eldritch monster boyfriend :)

Thank you to everyone who joined me on stream to watch me color this!!

#a bird fellow

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silas calling palamedes an inbred and implying that he has an improper relationship with his cavalier only gets funnier the longer i think about it. if silas knew that people shipped him with his nephew, i think he’d step off that cliff for realsies.

#opens with ‘I have no interest in talking to you anymore’ but keeps talking and getting meaner #what’s YOUR legal claim to your title boy king necro-heir? you didn’t even pass an exam #the locked tomb

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Now wait a dang minute, I'd forgotten about David's lament for Jonathan being called "The Song of the Bow" (you know the one, it's got the lines about "thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women"; it's a good 25% of the reason that anyone in the Christian tradition writing any kind of literature about anyone gay will drop a David and Jonathan reference in there.*)

And because I've been marinating in Tolkien, I remembered that the lament that Turin writes for Beleg is called "The Song of the Great Bow".

The thought of this being a deliberate reference hadn't crossed my mind because of the wildly different valences the stories of King David and Turin Turambar, but at the time of the lament in question, Turin is indeed also on the run from the court where once he was cherished as a hero, living among outlaws in the wilderness. (And will also go on to make some catastrophic choices in the matter of marriage, but that's a story for another time.)

*The other 75% is literally the entire rest of the story of David and Jonathan.

#slaps turin/beleg this doomed relationship can fit so many classical references in it

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Looking up some stuff led me to the Wikipedia page on Annwn, which made me go “hey that sounds like Henneth Annûn, i.e. Window on the West —> annûn = west = Valinor”, but Wikipedia’s already got it covered:

Annwn, Annwfn, or Annwfyn ([ˈanʊn]) is the Otherworld in Welsh mythology. Ruled by Arawn[1][2] (or, in Arthurian literature, by Gwyn ap Nudd[3]), it was essentially a world of delights and eternal youth where disease was absent and food was ever-abundant.[4][5]

…J. R. R. Tolkien used the word annún in his Middle-earth mythology as a term in the Elvish language Sindarin (phonologically inspired by Welsh) meaning "west" or "sunset" (cognate with the Quenya Andúnë), often referring figuratively to the "True West", i.e. the blessed land of Aman beyond the Sea, the Lonely Island Tol Eressëa, or (in the later mannish usage) to the drowned island of Númenor. This is an example of Tolkien's method of world-building by "explaining the true meaning" of various real-world words by assigning them an alternative "Elvish" etymology. The Sindarin word for 'king', aran is also similar to Arawn, the king of Annwn.

But. The Wikipedia entry also has this:

The appearance of a form antumnos on an ancient Gaulish curse tablet, which means an ('other') + tumnos ('world'), however, suggests that the original term may have been *ande-dubnos, a common Gallo-Brittonic word that literally meant "underworld".[7]

….I’m feeling like that’s where Tolkien got Utumno from.

#he might not have even done it on purpose! like when little bits of French slip into quenya or his Sindarin gets Latin for a bit #the man had a lot of real languages floating around in his head making random connections as he tried to conlang

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“come, let us march against the powers of heaven, and set black streamers in the firmament to signify the slaughter of the gods” is such a raw line you’d think it’s from Shakespeare, but it’s actually from the slightly earlier Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe