If This Pops Up While You’re Scrolling, I Wish You Unconditional Love And Massive Success.

reblog to give somebody a fucking hug because we are all struggling to get through it. solidarity in this tough ass world.

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.

ashes to ashes, dust to dust, reeses to pieces

I hope none of you disappear in the coming days. Seriously don't do anything that can't be undone.

BE MAD BE SAD BUT DONT U DARE GIVE UP

its so sweet to me whenever a reconstruction of a neanderthal's face shows up on social media and people are like "oh they would have loved minecraft" "they would have loved weed brownies" it's so sweet. i hope that continues on to the next stage of human evolution. i want whoever comes next to dig me up, reconstruct my face, and for the girlbloggers of this far-flung civilization to go "duuuude she would have loved churfing back a freefing zarbee"

I love kids they’re all like.. “when i grow up i’m gonna be an astronaut and a chef and a doctor and an olympic swimmer” like that self confidence! That drive! That optimism! Where does it go

I know we are all like "people in caveman times would drill holes in their head to relieve headaches" andwe go oh that's so stupid that's so dumb but like. then I get a headache and I'm like.ooooh I get it I get it. Grug prepare the drill.

If you’re an American federal employee and got an email saying “it’s ok to quit your job.” Do not, for the love of everything, quit your job. This is purely a scare tactic to get rid of as many people as possible without legal consequences.

happy memories , happy family

redraw of these two images from the show !

The first one is from s2 and the other is from s1 (I hope we get to see a better quality version of it one day)