Finally finished my Silmarillion/Lord of the Rings bookmark design! (Tumblr predictably destroyed the quality but you can click to see the original 🥲)
The top follows the story of Silmarillion from the Darkening of Valinor to Elwing’s flight from Sirion (upper left to upper right), and the bottom follows the Lord of the Rings from Bag-End to Mordor (lower right to lower left). At the end, of course, we end up back in Valinor to close the loop.
It ended up a bit cluttered because there was so much I wanted to fit in, but overall I’m rather happy with it :)
sophie hatter finally lives out every customer service worker's dream of retaliating to a mean customer AND telling them they suck and then when she thinks "wow standing up for myself was really liberating" she gets a curse put on her literally five minutes later
I attended a The Oh Hellos ( @theohfficialhellos ) concert this past Friday, which happened to coincide with Good Friday. One of there songs, Caesar, describes Christ’s Passion, so I had to make a comic and give it to them (I was able to give it to their merch guy, I hope the rest of band saw it!)
On an aside, that night, the concert, was particularly healing for me, as I’ve been going through some dark valleys lately. Sometimes Gods love appears in the form of a banjo ya know?
I hate the term "religious guilt" because most people who use it are severely muddling up (a) religious OCD (b) some messed up heresy like "it's wrong to be happy" (c) religious doctorine you don't agree with but aren't sure whether you're right not to
I hope y'all are familiar with these in this day and age, especially my artists out there, because they're incredibly common.
About half an hour ago I posted a drawing and tagged it #artists on tumblr, and very quickly received this comment.
My scam radar went off immediately, due to the generic blog name and lack of any emotion in the comment, but I decided it might be an entertaining venture so I dmed them. They asked for a drawing "of these", and sent me a random selfie. I got the details and told them it would be $15, and they promptly offered me $300. At this point I know it's a scam, but I play along for funsies and give them my paypal. Shortly, they send me this image for "confirmation" (I blocked out my email)
And they began to insist that I checked my email. I looked in my spam folder and found the following email.
This is fake. This is not a thing. And the "you're to refund the $200.00 back" is the scam. They send vaguely official-looking emails at you to "prove" that they sent you the money, then have you send them $200 (or however much the scam is for). Then, surprise surprise, you're out $200.
I continued to play along for a bit, and in the second email "Paypal" told me that I had to refund the $200 before they could "credit the $300 to my account", along with these lovely threats.
And yeah, it's silly. But it's not silly if you don't know and get scammed. So. Spread, please! And thank you very much to @mlaurel for the opportunity to get these screenshots.
I have some thoughts on Héra's "death" line at the climax of War of the Rohirrim and how it relates to Rohan's story during the War of the Ring.
Spoilers below for the movie!
When Héra tells Wulf that she was promised to death on the siege tower, I think that she was genuinely expecting to die there. Even if the plan went perfectly, she would be isolated from the Hornburg (as the siege tower's gangplank burned down) surrounded by an enemy army. Even if Fréaláf showed up, which to her is still a big if on timing if nothing else, that is not a situation one can reasonably expect to survive.
Yet, it's the only hope her people have to escape. She might die, but the rest would live if she could keep enough attention on her. Is this not what Théoden would do centuries later, first on the ramp of the Hornburg drawing the attention of the Uruk-Hai? Then again at Pelennor Fields, one probably last charge to try and win survival for their people. Failing that, at least choosing to die on their own terms instead of waiting for their turn to fall.
Is that not why Théoden's riders cheered "death!" at the enemy as they charged, throwing back the fear Mordor sought to spread back at its hosts? That they had accepted it and were ready to meet it? Is that not what the ideal of a warrior is so often touted as, fighting because they love what stands behind their aegis?
Héra may not have been fighting the same kind of existential war that Théoden was, but the same kind of courage was needed. Even if it all went well, I doubt she had any expectations of surviving that night. She nearly didn't, even with Fréaláf arriving and utterly terrorizing the Dunlending host into such a panicked rout. Yet, it was the way she could save those under her charge.
The moment she rode out onto the tower's gangplank, Héra truly promised herself to death.
“They don’t deserve the grace of God!”
Neither did you.
Diana Wynne Jones wins big once again for understanding that the funniest way to write an isekai/portal fantasy is from the point of view of the people living in the fantasy world who look at the character who got isekai’d from our world and are like ‘WHAT is that guy’s deal???’
Howl/Howell stumbling back into his moving castle drunk after a night with his rugby bros is like the second funniest scene in that book, closely followed by poor Sophie getting reverse isekai’d and taking a day trip to Wales and suffering the terrible ordeal of a ride in a car.
Christian FangirlMostly LotR, MCU, Narnia, and Queen's Thief
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