Timeline of the First Age – The Silmarillion to the tune of 'We Didn't Start the Fire' by Tim DeMarco (bardofarda)

@an-eldritch-peredhel

#i mean they did also light the fire. that was a pretty significant thing that happened. #like i understand where you’re coming from here but they very much did light the fire.

man lord of the rings just fills me with such profound sadness its a world that just…… makes me feel whole and hollow at the same time

14 yr old me saw this and knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to explain what the feeling this frame invokes in me is

the tacking-a-story-onto-the-end-of-my-elaborate-linguistics-exercise to emotionally-devastating-an-entire-generation pipeline

“[Eucatastrophe] is a sudden and miraculous grace […] It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies… universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories

“And when the glad shout had swelled up and died away again, to Sam’s final and complete satisfaction and pure joy, a minstrel of Gondor stood forth, and knelt, and begged leave to sing. And behold! he said:

‘Lo! lords and knights and men of valour unashamed, kings and princes, and fair people of Gondor, and Riders of Rohan, and ye sons of Elrond, and Dúnedain of the North, and Elf and Dwarf, and greathearts of the Shire, and all free folk of the West, now listen to my lay. For I will sing to you of Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom’

And when Sam heard that he laughed aloud for sheer delight, and he stood up and cried: ‘O great glory and splendor! And all my wishes have come true!’ And then he wept.

And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.”

and even then, I will sleep through ALL OF THEM

George R.R. Martin: dragons are huge ferocious beasts who answer to a master  

Tolkien: dragons are annoying, talking assholes

One interesting thought on this:

Fairy tale dragons? They’re like Smaug. They’re arrogant, talkative, they hoard treasure, they eat virgins. They’re amoral rather than evil, but they are intelligent monsters.

The dragon in Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, the one indirectly responsible for Eustace’s draconic curse is along the same lines.

At that time that is what a dragon was. There was a general consensus in western literature that dragons were, well, that.

In Medieval stories, dragons are to be killed by brave men. Gawain fights “wyrms” - a kind of wingless dragon. St. George slays a dragon. So does Beowulf. So does King Arthur. To be a worthwhile myth hero you have, at some point, to slay a dragon.

Early modern and nineteenth century dragons - we see one counter example - Faustus chariot is drawn by dragons in “Doctor Faustus.” The first really solid “friendly dragon” story is The Reluctant Dragon, which became a 1941 Disney film. That is the first story I can find about a dragon that befriends a human - but it’s friendship, not “human masters dragon.”

The second friendly dragon is E. Nesbit’s “The Last of the Dragons” who decides he’d rather hang out with the princess than fight the prince (the first example of subversion of the dragons eat maidens trope that I can find).

But they’re the minority.

In the 1930s, when Lewis and Tolkien were writing, dragons were the bad guys. The rare exceptions were dragons deciding not to act like dragons.

Then something happened.

That something probably started with a 1948 children’s book called “My Father’s Dragon - about a kid who runs away to Wild Island and rescues a baby dragon. Heard of it? If you’ve studied kid lit, sure, it won a ton of awards. Otherwise…nope, and certainly in Dawn Treader, written in 1950, dragons were still bad.

In the 1960s we start to see a couple more “good” dragons. But it’s almost always the same thing. Dragons are bad, except this one. This is a special dragon.

Then in 1967 John Campbell ran a story in Analog named Weyr Search. Heard of that one? Yup.

It was part of a novel called Dragonsflight, written by Grand Master Anne McCaffrey.

And she completely changed what dragons were.

Anne’s dragons were gentle, genetically engineered protectors who bonded to a human rider at birth and were “mastered” by that rider - the dragons offered instinct, but the reason came from the humans.

Anne McCaffrey was one of the first female authors to write science fiction by women about women - and while she had a number of flaws and was honestly a better worldbuilder than writer she inspired a lot of people.

And changed our view of dragons as a fantasy trope.

Since then most fantasy writers that include dragons have them as friendly and willing to be ridden by humans. Even the “good” dragons in the DragonLance novels.

In other words: In the space between Tolkein and Martin, who’s first short story collection was published in 1976, almost a decade after Weyr Search Anne McCaffrey turned dragons on their head.

Daenerys’ dragons owe more in their lineage to Ramoth than they do to Grendel, the dragon slain by Beowulf.

(In other words, literary evolution is fascinating).

do Ents reproduce by sexual intercourse or by pollination

But if they reproduce through pollination how can they be sure they no longer reproduce? Maybe they’re anemophilous and are wind-pollinated and if they stand in a strong enough breeze an Entwife, somewhere, conceives an Entseed.

oh my god maybe the Entwives were bees

you are a mad genius

Ok, so, we have a few options:

1.) Ents reproduce exclusively through sexual intercourse, or something close to it

OR

2.) Ents reproduce via pollination and...

The Entwives left the forest so long ago that the Ents no longer remember what they looked like. Treebeard says the Shire sounds like the sort of place they would have loved, with its gardens and flowers and agriculture. Hobbits have folklore of giant bees, named after bumblebees. Certain flowers only release pollen to “buzz pollinators”, like bumblebees.

Could it be that the Ents—who notoriously do everything slowly—failed to evolve quickly enough to compete with agricultural crops for the time and attention of their only pollinator species? Did the Entwives dump the Ents to evolve into regular bees faster than the Ents could even consciously process? DOES SAM GAMGEE THE GARDENER’S BOY KEEP ENTWIVES?!

I think we’ve done it. I think we’ve cracked the code. (Shut the fuck up, Jirt, no one asked you.)

It’s only in the movies that the Ents cannot remember the Ent wives. In the books they’ve described as having golden hair, red cheeks, and eyes like the Ents. Meaning the Entwives probably resembled the ents in appearance.

Likewise in the books the Ents were basically tree like giants instead of giant trees. As seen below

Peter Jackson reimagined the Ents as being giant trees instead of tree like giants so returning to the original question I propose a compromise:

Treebeard from the movies reproduces through pollination by the Ent Wives who are giant bees.

Treebeard from the books fucks. 

“Golden hair”?

“Red (butt) cheeks”?

Sounds like a rusty patched bumblebee to me.

Villa Vals

Architects CMA and SeARCH were focusing on the question if it would be possible to conceal a house in an Alpine slope while still exploiting the wonderful views and allowing light to enter the building when planing the Villa Vals. They decided to build a central patio into the steep incline to create a large facade with considerable potential for window openings. The viewing angle from the building is slightly inclined, giving a dramatic view of the beautiful mountains on the opposite side of the narrow valley.

All images © Iwan Baan

I WANTS IT!

This reminds me of Andalite scoops. Those actually make sense now that I’ve seen this.

Yes!

That’s kind of awesome.

I always pictured scoops as just square holes in the ground, but I guess they can’t be.

Although probably Ax’s Earth scoop is a hole in the ground, given that he doesn’t have access to many materials.

see, I looked at it and thought "ah, the modern hobbit"