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warrioreowynofrohan · 14 hours
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Silmarillion Daily - Of Fëanor, and the Dwarves
Two major developments today in Silm Daily!
First, Fëanor reaches the peak of his skills. I put this paragraph here (year 1250 of the Years of Trees) as it’s when History of Middle-earth dates his developement of the Tengwar (and also mentions his work on other gems, including the palantíri).
Fëanor is at this point around 70, which is still young for an elf (probably the Elven equivalent of mid-20s?).
Fëanor was tall, and fair of face, and masterful, his eyes piercingly bright and his hair raven-dark; in the pursuit of all his purposes eager and steadfast. Few ever changed his courses by counsel, none by force. He became of all the Noldor, then or after, the most subtle in mind and the most skilled in hand. In his youth, bettering the work of Rúmil, he devised those letters which bear his name, and which the Eldar used ever after; and he it was who, first of the Noldor, discovered how gems greater and brighter than those of the Earth might be made with skill. The first gems that Fëanor made were white and colourless, but being set under starlight they would blaze with blue and silver fires brighter than Helluin; and other crystals he made also, wherein things far away could be seen small but clear, as with the eyes of the eagles of Manwë. Seldom were the hands and mind of Fëanor at rest.
And, pretty much at the same time, we get the first meeting between the Sindar and the Dwarves, which actually goes very well! As an interesting note, by this time Khazad-dum is already well-established and flourishing; it could easily have been the oldest realm in Middle-earth.
It came to pass during the second age of the captivity of Melkor that Dwarves came over the Blue Mountains of Ered Luin into Beleriand. Themselves they named Khazâd, but the Sindar called them Naugrim, the Stunted People, and Gonnhirrim, Masters of Stone. Far to the east were the most ancient dwellings of the Naugrim, but they had delved for themselves great halls and mansions, after the manner of their kind, in the eastern side of Ered Luin; and those cities were named in their own tongue Gabilgathol and Tumunzahar. To the north of the great height of Mount Dolmed was Gabilgathol, which the Elves interpreted in their tongue Belegost, that is Mickleburg; and southward was delved Tumunzahar, by the Elves named Nogrod, the Hollowbold. Greatest of all the mansions of the Dwarves was Khazad-dûm, the Dwarrowdelf, Hadhodrond in the Elvish tongue, that was afterward in the days of its darkness called Moria; but it was far off in the Mountains of Mist beyond the wide leagues of Eriador, and to the Eldar came but as a name and a rumour from the words of the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains.
From Nogrod and Belegost the Naugrim came forth into Beleriand; and the Elves were filled with amazement, for they had believed themselves to be the only living things in Middle-earth that spoke with words or wrought with hands, and that all others were but birds and beasts. But they could understand no word of the tongue of the Naugrim, which to their ears was cumbrous and unlovely; and few ever of the Eldar have achieved the mastery of it. But the Dwarves were swift to learn and indeed were more willing to learn the Elven-tongue than to teach their own to those of alien race. Few of the Eldar went ever to Nogrod or Belegost, save Eöl of Nan Elmoth and Maeglin his son; but the Dwarves trafficked into Beleriand, and they made a great road that passed under the shoulders of Mount Dolmed and followed the course of the River Ascar, crossing Gelion at Sarn Athrad, the Ford of Stones, where battle after befell. Ever cool was the friendship between the Naugrim and the Eldar, though much profit they had one of the other; but at that time those griefs that lay between them had not yet come to pass, and King Thingol welcomed them. But the Naugrim gave their friendship more readily to the Noldor in after days than to any others of Elves and Men, because of their love and reverence for Aulë; and the gems of the Noldor they praised above all other wealth. In the darkness of Arda already the Dwarves wrought great works, for even from the first days of their Fathers they had marvellous skill with metals and with stone; but in that ancient time iron and copper they loved to work, rather than silver or gold.
Given the mentions of both language and craft in both passages here, the occurence of both these events at around the same time makes me wonder about what could have happened if all the Elves had remained in Middle-earth. Fëanor and the dwarves might have really hit it off, and who knows what inventions they’d have come up with.
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Concept: a mermaid who collects human artifacts, but, like, exclusively objects that humans have dramatically cast into the sea in moments of high emotion, catharsis, or personal revelation. Each item is carefully mounted above a little index card that outlines the circumstances of its hurling in terse, clinical prose.
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The Night before the Exam by Leonid Pasternak, 1895
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RB if you think CD drives in computers are not obsolete, but in fact still necessary, despite being artificially phased out
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Eowyn is finished, and my Lavender and LOTR series is officially a series!
Adapted from the patterns Celtic Spring and Celtic Winter by Marilyn Leavitt-Inblum
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The White Tree of Gondor is FINALLY DONE!!!! WAHOOOOO!!!!!! Ty to my papa for making this custom wood frame <3
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There’s piles of tumblr book clubs à la Dracula Daily now, but there’s one thing in that vein - a little different - that I’d especially love to see.
It would be, basically, a one-year event for the history of the world (kiiinda like Silmarillion Daily for reality?). The way it would work would be, you’d have one week for each century, going from 3000 BC through the 1900s. 3000 BC is around the origins of Sumer and ancient Egypt.
That gives 50 weeks with one century per week, so before that you could have two weeks at the start dedicated to prehistory - one for human origins and history prior to the Agricultural Revolution (which started in roughly the 9000s BC), and one for the period from the Agricultural Revolution to 3000 BC.
Then within the weeks, you can have one day per region of the world, e.g.:
Sub-Saharan Africa
North Africa and the Middle East
Europe
South and Central Asia
East and Southeast Asia and Oceania
North America (including Central America and the Caribbean)
South America
It could be anything from one person with a decent general knowledge of history and willingness to spend a lot of time on Wikipedia; to posts from people with specialized knowledge on specific regions and periods; to a collaborative blog with one or more knowledgable people editing/vetting it fir accuracy; but I think it would be a really fun way to develop a better understanding of what things were co-occurring in different regions at different times, and to get a sense of just how little of history is taken up by modern history.
It would, however, also be a total mountain of work.
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Silmarillion Daily - Of the Birth of Finarfin
Y.T. 1230: Birth of Finarfin, son of Finwë and Indis. His brother Fingolfin is 40 years old, a little before adulthood for an elf. His half-brother Fëanor is 61, an adult.
This made me curious about the usual length of time between Elf siblings in Tolkiens’ works, so I looked it up. There are 40 years between Fingolfin and Finarfin. There are also 40 years between Fingon and Turgon. (In the Third Age, Arwen is born more than 100 years after Elladan and Elrohir, but I’m guessing that’s unusual.) There’s 62 years between Finrod and Galadriel, with 2-3 additional prothers being born during that time, so that’s 20 years or fewer between siblings in that case. Whereas there’s 62 years between Turgon and Aredhel. So there’s a faur amount of variability.
The amount of time between Fingolfin and Finarfin seems odd to me, though, because one of the big reasons Finwë got remarried was wanting more kids.
Fingolfin is born 21 years after Fëanor. And then Finwë waits nearly twice as long to have another kid? It makes me think that Fëanor’s negative reaction to Fingolfin deterred Finwë from having more kids for a while, in case it would make the interfamily conflucts even worse.
Though of course, that doesn’t apply if you go with one of the HoME drafts that has Indis and Lalwen. I don’t know if their birthdates are given in any of those drafts.
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(for the sake of simplicity and first-second age separation, do not count celebrimbor).
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I've been talking with a few people irl about the TikTok ban and I was wondering if I could get your take on it? (iirc you work in election security). Mainly I'd like to know why TikTok/China is *uniquely* bad wrt dating mining/potential election interference when we've seen other companies/governments do the same thing (thinking of the Russian psyops here on Tumblr in 2016). It feels like the scope is so narrow that it doesn't come close to targeting the root problem (user privacy and data mining as a whole), leading me to think it's only point is "ooh China Scary". Thoughts? (No worries if you'd rather not get into it, I just thought of you as someone who might have more insight/informed opinions on the matter).
So I'm not really familiar with all the details of the case and certainly not all the details of the bill. But I will give my perspective:
TikTok as a particular threat to users' data and privacy has been known for some time in the cybersecurity world. US government employees and contractors have been straight-up forbidden to have it on their phones for some time now. I, for example, have never had it on my phone because of these security concerns. (Worth noting, I'm not a government employee or contractor, it was just a known-to-be dangerous app in the cybersecurity world so I avoided it.)
This is because the parent company, as I understand, has known connections to the Chinese government that have been exploited in the past. For example, to target journalists.
Worth noting, another app that would potentially be on the chopping block is WeChat, which also has close ties (or is outright owned by?) to the Chinese government.
I think this is important to note because I've seen some hot takes here on Tumblr have said that the entire case against TikTok is made up and there is no security threat. That is simply not true. The concerns have been there for a while.
However, the question of what to do about it is a thorny one.
The determination seems to be that so long as TikTok is still owned by its parent company with its direct ties to the Chinese government, there really is no way to guarantee that it's safe to use. From that angle, demanding that the company sever ties and set up some form of local ownership makes sense.
I am not a lawyer, but, that being said, this is a pretty invasive and unusual step for legislators to take, even in a clear case of spying. I'm sure TikTok's widespread popularity is a big part of the threat it poses. (Because it is on so many phones, it really could be a danger to national security.)
That said, at one point young activists on TikTok embarrassed Trump (lots of good context in this article) while he was campaigning in 2020, and there was some talk then about shutting it down which seemed pretty clearly linked to how it was used as a platform to organize against him. I'm sure there's at least some right wing antipathy towards the app that has a political basis going back to this event. Trump signed an executive order banning it, the ban going into effect got bogged down in the courts, and then Biden rescinded that executive order when he got into office, pending an investigation into the threat it posed.
Those investigations seem to have further confirmed that the Chinese government is getting access to US user data through the app, and further confirmed it as a security threat.
Now, to muddy the waters further, there's several dodgy investment funds including one owned by former Secretary of the Treasury to Trump Steven Mnuchin that are circling with an interest to buy TikTok if it does sell. That's very concerning.
Funds like Mnuchin's interest in purchasing TikTok (even though they do invest in other technologies too, so it is in their portfolio) definitely makes the motivations behind the sale look pretty damning as momentum builds, that it could be some sort of money grab here in the US.
China has also pointed out that forcing the sale of a company because of spying concerns like this opens a whole can of worms. If China thinks that, say, Microsoft is spying on their citizens, could they force the US company to sell to a Chinese investor? Could they force Google? Could they even further polarize the internet in general between "free" and "not free" (as in, behind the great Chinese or Russian firewall, as examples) if this precedent is set, so that no Western companies can operate in authoritarian states or protect their users there? Or, if you don't have so rosy a view of Western companies, could it effectively deal a blow to international trade in general by saying you have to have to sell any overseas arms of a company to someone who is from there? Again, I'm not a lawyer, but this is a hell of a can of worms to open.
But again, this is muddy because China absolutely is spying on TikTok users. The security reason for all of this is real. What to do about it is the really muddled part that has a ton of consequences, and from that angle I agree with people who are against this bill. Tons of bad faith consequences could come out of it. But the concerns kicking off the bill are real.
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That period between Aragorn's marriage and the Elves leaving Middle-earth must have been absolutely wild for the scribes, librarians, historians and archivists of Minas Tirith, because you suddenly have the people of Rivendell, who are packing, graciously sending for you to quickly transcribe the texts they're taking with them so the knowledge is not lost from mortals, but also just gifting you tons of priceless manuscripts because they have more than one edition of the same thing, or because they're sure there are many more in the West, and there's obviously no need to take 20 copies of Rumil's Ainulindalë with them.
And on the other hand, everyone who knew him is certain Finrod has been pestering every single new arrival in Valinor for information about Men, and you're Faramir, and Elrond asks you for a favour and is like, "Galadriel wants to collect as much information about your cultures and history as she can for her brother; do you think you could find anything of interest in Minas Tirith?", and you're like "The Lady of the Golden Wood....???? Fi-nrod Edenn-il???", of course you'll butcher the job, this is too much, but ultimately you just may have prepared a dossier for the greatest hero of the First Age and you have to lie down for a moment.
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warrioreowynofrohan · 11 days
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BlackCoffeeBulb: you'll get him sued for copyright infringement for a few useless internet points, congrats
mpkeith :  It's free advertising...
"Where did the name Wind Runner come from?"
"Well, there are these amazing books..."
So far (to my knowledge) nobody has been sued for Bridge Four homemade stuff, fan art, 3D printed shard blades and so on.
I really don't think Brandon Sanderson is that kind of guy. Seems to me he's happy to share with all of us his work.
Brandon Sanderson: I have expressly permitted it, in fact. I had a lawyer draw up as liberal a fanart policy as I could make, and not scare away people like film companies. Basically, you can create whatever you want for your personal use, and can even sell some form of fanart so long as you're not using me or implied relationship with me in the marketing.
Do look at the official language in my FAQ, though, as opposed to taking my (flawed) memory on how it works. Either way, no, I'm not going to ever be bothered by individual fan creations, and instead encourage them. And something like this far is a huge mark of respect from the owner, toward me.
gsauce8:  So essentially as long as you're not saying something along the lines of "Officially licensed" or anything close to that, you're good to go? That's freaking awesome.
Brandon Sanderson: It's a little more tricky than that--I let the lawyers hash it out. But basically, you can't use our artwork, our branding, and can't say it's official. But you CAN sell art prints of art you made of characters/scenes from the books, even if they include things like Kaladin's scars or a Bridge Four patch. You don't need a license, and you don't owe us anything.
It's a legal grey area that I want to make less grey. I like fanart, and want to encourage it--and in so doing, feel like an artist making something transformative like this should be able to profit from their art. Yes, my books inspired that art--but other books inspired me to write, as did films and artwork. This is how art is created.
Mostly, this applies to thinks like prints right now. (We haven't authorized T-shirts, for example, as that kind of thing gets really tricky with movie deals wanting merchandising rights.) Again, read the exact language on the FAQ, but we've tried to be as lenient here as we can be.
Also, I have no problem with fanfic, so long as it remains in the fan realm, rather than being sold. (But if you write something awesome, and readers like it, I'd encourage you to change the names/setting and rebrand it as your own so you could sell it.)
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warrioreowynofrohan · 12 days
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Silmarillion Daily - Of the Marriage of Fëanor (Years of the Trees 1215-1218)
While still in his early youth Fëanor wedded Nerdanel, the daughter of a great smith named Mahtan, among those of the Noldor most dear to Aulë; and of Mahtan he learned much of the making of things in metal and in stone. Nerdanel also was firm of will, but more patient than Fëanor, desiring to understand minds rather than to master them, and at first she restrained him when the fire of his heart grew too hot; but his later deeds grieved her, and they became estranged. Seven sons she bore to Fëanor; her mood she bequeathed in part to some of them, but not to all.
[NOTE: This date is approximate. Fëanor is said to have married Nerdanel "while still in early youth,” and the Eldar generally did not marry before age 50, and typically only a little after that; so we could estimate that Fëanor married Nerdanel rather earlier than was normal, when he was in his 40s. He would be age 46-48 during Y.T. 1215-1217.
The members of the House of Finwë – his children and grandchildren – will be described as a group after all of them have been born. The dates of the births of Fëanor’s sons are not recorded, and neither are the dates of the births of some of Finarfin’s children.]
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warrioreowynofrohan · 13 days
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Romans, countrymen and lovers! hear me for my cause; and be silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe; censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that he would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that he will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.
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warrioreowynofrohan · 13 days
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One of the things that’s really struck me while rereading the Lord of the Rings–knowing much more about Tolkien than I did the last time I read it–is how individual a story it is.
We tend to think of it as a genre story now, I think–because it’s so good, and so unprecedented, that Tolkien accidentally inspired a whole new fantasy culture, which is kind of hilarious. Wanting to “write like Tolkien,” I think, is generally seen as “writing an Epic Fantasy Universe with invented races and geography and history and languages, world-saving quests and dragons and kings.” But… But…
Here’s the thing. I don’t think those elements are at all what make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so good. Because I’m realizing, as I did not realize when I was a kid, that Tolkien didn’t use those elements because they’re somehow inherently better than other things. He used them purely because they were what he liked and what he knew.
The Shire exists because he was an Englishman who partially grew up in, and loved, the British countryside, and Hobbits are born out of his very English, very traditionalist values. Tom Bombadil was one of his kids’ toys that he had already invented stories about and then incorporated into Middle-Earth. He wrote about elves and dwarves because he knew elves and dwarves from the old literature/mythology that he’d made his career. The Rohirrim are an expression of the ancient cultures he studied. There are a half-dozen invented languages in Middle-Earth because he was a linguist. The themes of war and loss and corruption were important to him, and were things he knew intimately, because of the point in history during which he lived; and all the morality of the stories, the grace and humility and hope-in-despair, was an expression of his Catholic faith. 
J. R. R. Tolkien created an incredible, beautiful, unparalleled world not specifically by writing about elves and dwarves and linguistics, but by embracing all of his strengths and loves and all the things he best understood, and writing about them with all of his skill and talent. The fact that those things happened to be elves and dwarves and linguistics is what makes Middle-Earth Middle-Earth; but it is not what makes Middle-Earth good.
What makes it good is that every element that went into it was an element J. R. R. Tolkien knew and loved and understood. He brought it out of his scholarship and hobbies and life experience and ideals, and he wrote the story no one else could have written… And did it so well that other people have been trying to write it ever since.
So… I think, if we really want to write like Tolkien (as I do), we shouldn’t specifically be trying to write like linguists, or historical experts, or veterans, or or or… We should try to write like people who’ve gathered all their favorite and most important things together, and are playing with the stuff those things are made of just for the joy of it. We need to write like ourselves.
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