Shoutout To All The Kind Strangers Who Make Things More Accessible For People Like Me

You ever think about unimaginably far back in the past the event of the First Age are compared to LOTR. Just. By LOTR Gondor is more than 3000 years old. For us 3000 years ago is… It’s not just before the Roman Empire, it’s before Rome even existed. It’s back before Ancient Greece as we usually mean it was a thing. Tutankhamun ruled around 3300 years ago. Numenor is to Gondor what ancient Egypt is to us. And the founding of Numenor was more than 6000 years prior. That’s older than the first recorded examples of a writing system we have

Imagine being a scholar in Gondor and being able to read a diary that was written by someone in Numenor. Imagine reading a 5000 years old letter written by a Numenorean, and not like a transaction receipt or something of the sorts, not something written for functionality when written language was just invented, but something already fully fleshed out and nuanced. Imagine being told that out there the brother of the first king of Numenor is still alive and he could tell you all about him. That’s like if you could just stroll to a Sumerian and ask them what Uruk was like back in the day. If I was Boromir I would have died on the spot meeting Elrond

And like maybe the scholars would have enough documents and proof to say yes, Numenor existed, Elros existed too, but the common people? What would a fisherman or farmer said if you told them about it? The tale about the son of a star who ruled a star-shaped island, and of the star-shaped island who was sunk in the sea after the old kings became evil, that would absolutely be seen as a legend. There’s gotta be plenty of Gondorians who think Numenor was just a tale, a metaphor, that there’s no way the stories are true, and they’d be right to think that because it’s such a wild tale and from so long ago that it just sounds like someone made it up at some point

consider this: given how much the hobbits are said to love legalese and documentation, I think when the shirriffs tried to arrest Frodo and company on their return Frodo should have just refused on the basis that they have no official proof that he is, in fact, Frodo Baggins

Cartographic Practices of Arda: Men

[overthinking fantasy cartography series: Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men]

o   Men might seem like the most straightforward group to analyze, but they’re not. Why should we assume that humans in Arda use the same cartographic practices that we do? For that matter, who is “we”? Cartography is not a set of objective and universally or historically standard techniques; it is not an exact science; the modern maps treated as real or correct maps are not the one true way to represent space. Tolkien’s Edain may be based on Western Europeans, but they’re still fantasy, and there’s no reason that their cartography should look like Western Europe’s

Further, Western European cartography wasn’t standardized in terms of techniques or even units of measure until early states began to want visual representations of their territory that would make them more easily taxed and managed, especially as enclosure policies took off, market forces became increasingly dominant, and controlling a standardized populace became an important goal of government

o    Western cartography is also deeply intertwined with maps as a colonial and imperialist tool, which impacted the development of mapping practices, the lands those maps reflected, and the ways in which space was imagined. I think that governing, planning military operations, maybe taxing the populace, and carrying out various expansionist programs would be the activities in Middle-earth driving cartographic development among Men, similar to Europe, but it’s not inevitable at all that the maps they make for such things would look the same. Maybe they could make maps of layered symbols rather than mimicking on-the-ground spatial relations, or paintings whose details correspond to geographic referents, or physical models of space a la Polynesian stick charts (although I do think there’s an artifacts-have-politics argument to be made about which cartographic practices are most conducive to certain uses and conceptions of space, but I digress)

o   But presuming Men do make maps in the same vein as those found in the books (though I should say I don’t take those as being real in-world maps, per se), what would they map? And how would they map it?

Starting with the Edain and the kingdoms they founded, since their influence is so centered in LOTR, I think their cartography would develop as a formal practice in Númenor, and prior to that, they might use the maps of Elven realms of which they were vassals, or might create their own spatial navigation techniques, not necessarily cartographic

Likely, considerable influence of Elvish cartography on Númenórean maps would carry over to Gondor and Arnor. While Elves might only need maps as reference for memorization, or for military strategy planning, I think Men’s reproduction of and reliance on maps would increase greatly, especially during the colonial age of Númenor and the realms they established. Cartography could become a more established discipline; populations could be managed more effectively, at least under the more competent rulers; similar to early-state-formation Europe, you could see cartography as an increasingly important tool of state 

(this is a long one, so the rest is under the cut)

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ATLA Gen Fic Recs!

this took a while but here it is! this is just going to be the fics that i've been reading recently, because otherwise this list would go on forever. if you want the full atla list of fics i read, check out my ao3 bookmarks.

How to Disappear Completely by aeoleus @ta1k-less : zuko unexpectedly gains custody of both kiyi and azula after his mom dies in a car crash. i love this one... zuko loves both of his sisters so much and he would do anything for them T_T

The [insert title here] and the Fire Lord by azenki: this one is technically gen but literally everyone thinks zuko is dating around. this is just such a silly and hilarious fic, really made my day after reading it.

Kintsugi by @discordiansamba : this is a series where zuko is just dumped in the earth kingdom after his agni kai and somehow becomes toph's bodyguard. i love the bonding between zuko and toph, and i abosolutely adore the oc's in this fic

Dragon Moon by Satirrian: technically so far this is gen but the author did mention there might be shipping later. THIS FIC!! It literally has so many different things going on but it works. Dragon!Zuko. that should already be enough to get you reading. June teaches Zuko how to be a bounty hunter and their bickering is hilarious. Zuko is such a sassy little shit in this one. Katara has a Mulan moment and it’s absolutely badass.

There Is No Fire Lord by OccasionalStorytelling: this one is inspired by Towards the Sun by @muffinlance. So zuko gets caught while escaping during the eclipse, he gets thrown in prison, and then when ozai is defeated zuko technically becomes fire lord but stays in prison. also his leg gets broken like 3 times lol

A Hundred Golden Suns by aeoleus (@ta1k-less): zuko dies at the agni kai but agni says fuck that and he is basically resurrected in the southern water tribe, where hakoda adopts him. this fic will hurt your heart but in a good way

In The Garden Light At Dawn by Rosemary_and_Geraniums: this one is Very Angsty and has a major character death so warning on that. I just had to include it because it's soooo good and i love angst fics, but if that's not your thing then skip this. This is a soulmate au, but not in a good way lol. zuko never got away after confronting his father during the eclipse. again this is Very Sad so skip if you get upset with unhappy endings

Consider Chaos series by @awesomeavocadolove : ChaosAvatar!zuko. How can you say no to that???

Pride Is Not The Word by @sword-and-stars : iroh gets a call from his long-lost nephew asking him to pick him up. then he discovers that his nephew has been homeless for a year after ozai kicked him out. iroh is having none of that and takes zuko in while quietly think of the best way to murder an abusive piece of shit

The Heat That Drives The Light (the fire it ignites) by isamagicdragon and thegracious: im obsessed with this one. azulon asks ozai to kill azula instead of zuko, who both say "fuck that" and run away to the earth kingdom. years later they hear about the avatar, who was captured by admiral zhao and kept prisoner in pohai stronghold. they decide to break him out

The Family You Choose by TunaFishChris: another soulmate one because i am a slut for them. some people are born with soulmarks. zuko's were burned off by azulon when he was born, because they make you weak.

Doe-eyed by anonymous: a gift fic for @muffinlance. azula is the firstborn, and she is eleven when zuko is born. bigsister!azula is everything you didn't know you needed

East and West by @d-naggeluide : zuko, toph, and earth king kuei go on a field trip together. sarcastic toph, resigned zuko, and kuei who had no idea what he had gotten himself into

“But you always have to watch Tolkien with water. He never uses it unmeaningfully. Pools and lakes mirror stars, and hold hidden things. The Anduin has contrastin banks and, moreover, reeks of history. In a way, it is history, and the Fellowship is going with the current, to break up in confusion at the falls of Rauros. It is worth pointing out that when Aragorn later uses the same river, he comes up it, against the current, changing a course of events that seems inevitable. The other water is of course the Sea. This has been sounding dimly in our ears throughout the book, but in Lothlorien it begins to thunder. Does it suggest loss, departure and death? Certainly. But since water is always life to Tolkien, it must also be eternity.”

— Diana Wynne Jones, ‘The Shape of the Narrative in The Lord of the Rings.’

First age family reunions be like:

reblog and describe your favorite tolkien character in the tags

I've always followed this saying: hope for the best, but expect the worst.

So many people hear that, and they immediately assume I'm an extreme pessimist. Or they'll think that that saying is what makes me so depressed. It makes me extremely frustrated because I don't expect the worst in a "life sucks and the world hates me" kind of way.

I struggle when things go wrong, especially when it catches me off guard. Unexpected bad things can trigger big, out of control emotions, and for my autism (and cptsd) that's hard to deal with. It can lead to things being more traumatic than they need to be if I'm not prepared for the bad outcome. The whole situation feels out of control, and I don't always have a good sense of clarity when I'm having intense emotions or a meltdown, which makes my own response feel out of my control.

So, I try and expect and prepare for the worst. I talk myself through what I will do if something doesn't go the way I want. I make guesses on how I will feel, and talk myself through those emotions before they've ever even come up. I make plans on what my next steps will be, even if those next steps are simply time to recover from disappointment. All the while, I still am hoping for the best. I want things to go well, I want to succeed. I hold my breath, cross my fingers, and wish for things to turn out well.

Nobody ever understands this. I'm not trying to be a pessimist, I'm trying to accommodate for myself and make my life easier, to make my life happier. Life, by chance, is going to disappoint sometimes. I don't want to be blindsided and thrown into a tailspin. I want to be able to sit with myself and process, and move on. And I don't know why people can't understand that.

ID: Katara and sokka in swimgear. in the first image, sokka is searching for something in the water. his hair getting wet. katara leans over to him saying "don't you think, its time for a haircut?" in the second image sokka rose form the water, a dog-shark creature in hand, swinging his hair in Katara face splashing her. smugly he says "no <3". End ID

i know its winter! i know it likley snowed by now on the northern hemilsphere! but... on the southern side is summer time right??? so... its fine.... this is fine!!!

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!!! please do not use or repost this artwork without permission!!!