Cartographic Practices In Arda: Hobbits

@prekliata-bryndza I realize what gets to me about Elrond as specifically the minstrel of Gil-galad. Obviously I have thought about Maglor teaching him, but many people have already created works on this topic better than I can. Actually this makes me think of a scene I have had in my mind for quite a while but haven’t written yet. I imagine near the end of the War of Wrath, a ship full of refugees fleeing a sinking Beleriand lead by Elros at the front steering, and I imagine Elrond at the back singing to comfort the children and the hurt and the weary, and this is how I came up with a concept of this role that Elrond fulfills first beside Elros in practice and then beside Gil-galad officially that is more than knowledge and wisdom — the close companion of a king whose role is less decisive but less constrained than a king’s, therefore providing a balance to kingliness that Elros and Gil-galad and their peoples value and need.

Dancing under the stars and calling clients while lightly bouncing on the trampoline are not mutually exclusive with adulthood.

Don't deprive yourself of joy because you think maturity is being serious and worried all the time.

I'm approaching parenting age and I've been thinking back on all the stuff I put my parents through as a kid. Only thought now is "oh no, God help me"

I headcanon that Gil-Galad is the eldest son of Galadriel, because canon-wise it makes no sense whatsoever and should dissatisfy all parties equally.

today i’ve seen a lot about disney ‘copyrighting’ loki. the whole thing seemed rather ridiculous to me, so i decided to do some research; it’s still a sketchy situation all around but as someone who is close with people who are practicing norse pagans, i felt like it was important to share.

firstly: the mouse did not, actually, do anything here in regards to the redbubble artist. it was actually redbubble that sent the email and took the work down, because the artist was copying a shirt from the comics. as in, it’s literally on the cover of a comic book, same text, color, and all.

the email alert to the artist was likely auto-generated. the email states: “…in most cases, this means that the rights holder did not specifically identify your work for removal.” so redbubble is being overly cautious here.

is it silly? yes. we won’t argue that point. it’s two words on a t-shirt.

secondly: that article is poorly researched and written. their “source” for their claim that disney might trademark mythological depictions of loki is the artist who was copying the shirt. according to the article: “Even art specifically of the Norse deity, which predates the MCU character by a handful of centuries, could be claimed, according to an artist who posted a takedown notice of their Loki art from Redbubble.”

‘could be claimed,’ says the artist. so what i’ve just read is that disney isn’t actually claiming anything. the artist is upset that their copied work was removed from redbubble by redbubble and is making baseless claims.

then i got to thinking about “the rights holder,” being the mouse. where does that leave us? do they hold the rights to loki? can they even do that?

the answer is no — sort of.

from what i can tell (and again, i’m an internet random, so i may be wrong!) it appears that the mouse is not copyrighting the norse gods, they’re trademarking their particular versions of loki — so comic depictions, movie depictions, etc. “marvel’s loki,” vs norse loki, basically, or “loki as depicted by tom hiddleston.” meaning any unauthorized art that could be linked to disney’s trademarked version of loki is within the company’s rights to have removed. but again, in this situation that started the whole kerfluffle, it was redbubble that removed it.

then i got to thinking a little more: what’s the difference between trademark and copyright?

as it turns out, copyright and trademark are two very different things. here’s an article that details it fairly clearly, but this snippet below is a pretty good summary.

“Overall, copyright protects literary and artistic materials and works, such as books and videos, and is automatically generated upon creation of the work. A trademark, on the other hand, protects items that help define a company brand, such as a business logo or slogan, and require more extensive registration through the government for the greatest legal protections.”

so disney has trademarked their particular version of loki. trademark is also limited to a particular context. the mouse trademarking loki in the context of a superhero/comic book world means that he cannot be made into a comic book hero or villain by anyone but marvel.

tl;dr — don’t panic if you are someone who counts loki or anyone else in the norse pantheon among your deities. a very overzealous redbubble, not disney, was the one who took down the shirt and sent the email, and they state in that email that “in most cases, the rights holder did not identify your work for removal.” the article that claims that disney is trademarking loki is poorly researched, written, and designed to freak you out.

I have a lot of Thoughts about the framing of classic fantasy stories that are actual specific published works as Ye Olde Folktales of no particular origin. especially given the most common modern understanding of “original fairytale” as “didactic story intended for children”

(same goes for stories where the most common modern understanding of the story is based on one particular published version)

like. I don’t know. Beauty and the Beast owes a lot of tropes to earlier tales that occupy the nebulous ~folklore~ space we usually assign it to, but the actual story itself is a novel. a full-on fantasy novel intended for adults, with a known author (Gabrielle Suzanne Barbot de Villenueve), published in a definite time and place (1740 France)

the most popular modern version of Cinderella- with the fairy godmother, glass slipper, single ball, and so on -was written in 1697 by Charles Perrault. that’s not the oldest known version of the story, and DEFINITELY not the only one out there, but it’s the one that most informs our cultural ideas about what Cinderella is. in the west and honestly, in most of the world

(luckily most people know by now that The Little Mermaid started life as a story written by a particular author. but it sometimes falls prey to these misconceptions, too)

this is all really hard to articulate, but it just feels weird to say “Beauty and the Beast was meant to teach girls to accept arranged marriage!” when you wouldn’t try to sum up, say, The Fellowship of the Ring so neatly. or “well, in the ORIGINAL Cinderella, birds peck out the stepsisters’ eyes!” when that comes from a version published in 1819- over a century after the version we’re most familiar with today

I think it also takes away important context when analyzing these stories, to completely sever them from the very specific points in history that created them and make them seem the product of a murky, generic Olden Time™ that never existed

Top 5 Best Funny Hobbit Lines

1) “This is what it is, Mr Baggins,” said the leader of the Shirriffs, a two-feather hobbit. “You’re arrested for Gate-breaking, and Tearing up of Rules, and Assaulting Gatekeepers, and Trespassing, and Sleeping in Shire-buildings without Leave, and Bribing Guards with Food.”

“And what else?” said Frodo.

“That’ll do to go on with,” said the Shirriff-leader.

“I can add some more, if you’d like it,” said Sam. “Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools.”

I am particularly impressed by Sam’s ability to marshall the power of Verbal Capitalization when called for.

2) “If you turn over a new leaf, and keep it turned, I’ll cook you some taters one of these days. I will: fried fish and chips served by S. Gamgee. You couldn’t say no to that.”

“Yes, yes we could. Spoiling nice fish, scorching it. Give me fish now, and keep nassty chips!”

Poor Gollum, doomed to a world without sashimi.

3) “Mercy!” cried Gandalf. “If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?”

“The names of all the stars, and of all living things, and the whole history of Middle-earth and Over-heaven and of the Sundering Seas,” laughed Pippin. “Of course! What less? But I am not in a hurry tonight.”

What makes it all the funnier is Pippin’s sheer laziness. He spent two months in Rivendell and, going by Merry’s comments, I doubt he so much as opened a single book. But he’ll quiz Gandalf incessantly.

4) Gaffer Gamgee, on his son’s sartorial choices: I don’t hold with wearing ironmongery, whether it wears well or no.

There has never been a more quintessentially Hobbit line.

5) Merry Brandbuck, after assisting in destroying the Lord of the Nazgûl: I am hungry. What is the time?

Okay, so it’s not inherently funny, but it gets major points for context.

my life has been comedy hell for the past 48 hours. so this tiktok zoomer used my email address to sign up for a tiktok account. how tiktok allowed them to do this, i have no idea. aren’t real, respectable social media sites supposed to force you to validate the email before it is used? smh. but i noticed this about a week or so ago. i sent tiktok a ticket telling them to take my email off to no avail. okay, so after receiving the 20th tiktok notification in my email i decide to take matters into my own hands. i reset the password on the account and logged in to make it stop.

then, i posted a tiktok telling the user to POST THEIR EMAIL IN THE COMMENTS so I can change the account ownership over to them. sounds simple enough, but it is here that i truly learned the failure of the american education system. the original user and their friend posted hysterically about how they were going to “text tiktok” to get the account back, i’m a hacker, their username only has letters and numbers in it, how did you change the password, etc. i explained, over ten times, simply and nicely, that this person signed up with my email, and i simply need them to read the instructions and post their email so i can change the account ownership.

whoever is raising zoomers have failed. mfers can’t even read anything more complex than a tiktok caption anymore. stop letting these ipads raise your children or i will call copmala harris. this is the living result of politicians defunding public education. anyway. after an hour, i suppose the two and a half braincells they share rubbed together and an email was provided, but the email is already attached to another account!

i realized this absolute child prodigy signs up for tiktok accounts with emails they have no control over and she makes new accounts when she needs to reset the password. she’s in Fr*aking high school and by that age I know yall have to use your email for stuff. wtf. like this is some shit i’d expect my over 70 year old internet savy-less grandmother to do, and not even she does this! Anyway. Maybe I will receive a functional email at some point today. They are probably asleep because they need to wake up early to attend the grade school that is not teaching them how to read. 😎🔫 WAIT NO THEY ARE NOT IT IS THE WEEKEND. 😎🔫

reading romance as an aroace

*opens book*

"Let's get to the good stuff"

*flips past first meeting, kissing, smut*

*gets to a mature, understanding conversation between the couple in which they each apologize, explain their experience, work out the problem between them, and formulate a specific plan to make sure things will be better in the future*

"Now THIS is what I'm here for!" *happy stimming*