So, I Fell Down A Rabbit Hole And Learned Two Cool Things In Relation To The Irish Language And Tolkien!

[ID.: two screenshots of a Mashable article. The text reads, "That discovery was almost entirely manual, made possible by the all-consuming, boundless energy of adolescence without any algorithmic design. 'We are in this place of culture, where so many people expect algorithmic understanding,' says Brennan. Tumblr might be the place for you to go out and find yourself, but 'TikTok basically comes to you,' says Zuccarelli, because the algorithm 'knows everything about you.' To compete in the recommendation algorithm arena, Tumblr would need to ask its users for more information about who they are and what they like, something it historically has rebuked in favor of anonymity. At the time of publishing, Tumblr reports that there are 9.4 million daily posts on the platform, compared to 84 million in 2014. But with the rise of '90s and early 2000s nostalgia among Gen Z, a revival of the platform seems possible. In January, D'Onofrio said that half of the platform's active users and 71 percent of its new users are Gen Z. Kahle who, at 25, is a zillennial, says attracting Gen Z and getting them to stay 'may come down to the product.' For example, Kahle says 'if Gen Z's attention span is whatever percent shorter than millennials' then the recommendation algorithm needs to be used to churn out content way faster.'"

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Not that I disagree with OP, but I'd reblog a lot more fanart and other images if more people put image descriptions. Making your posts more accessible means more people can reblog them!

/nbh /nm

if you’re a new tumblr user from tiktok or IG or something and only like posts and dont reblog them yeah people will think you’re a bot and block you but you will also make this website actively worse. they want “algorithmic” users like you, served recommended posts through likes, not people who just follow each other and respond to the direct chronological feed. there is a reason this website is still better than the rest, even with all its problems, do not ruin this

I did some more fantasy archery trope testing. This time the arrow stabby thing!

Bilbo was declared dead while he was away in the Hobbit (and had to do a bunch of paperwork to get declared alive again) but there’s no indication he was formally declared dead after leaving the Shire, even though most people assumed he had died.

Therefore I posit: having a missing person declared dead in the Shire requires the consent of their next of kin. Whoever Bilbo’s next of kin was at the time of the Hobbit (possibly Otho? I’m not sure) had him declared dead at the first opportunity but Frodo refused to ever do it.

Frodo had anxious hobbit bureaucrats knocking on his door every couple of years like ‘Mr Baggins… blease… it’s been 10 years… he was eleventy-one… can we fill out his death certificate yet’ and Frodo was like ‘absolutely not’.

Early on he genuinely couldn’t bring himself too but after a while it was more that he enjoyed irritating the local magistrate’s office than anything else.

Also how can Arthur Conan Doyle write a character like Irene Adler 1891 and have her 1. Outsmart Sherlock Holmes and get away with it and 2. Be in no way a damsel or love interest to Sherlock.. But every modern retelling not only has her be a sexual /love interest character but she is posed as being very very smart… But never smart enough to just outwit him, get away with it and move on? Women can be smart, sure, but no one is allowed to be smarter than Sherlock.

It’s been over 120 years and Irene is, at her best, never as decently treated as the original.

"So, wait," said the thief, topping off the detective's wine glass. "You're saying that your stressful case is catching that hot shot cat burglar that everyone's talking about?"

The detective grimaced, but didn't change the subject. "Yep," they muttered into their Pinot and took a swig. "The celebrity criminal."

This was a triumph. This was their third date and the thief had spent the prior two carefully laying the emotional groundwork leading up to this moment. The detective, as a social partner, was affable and considerate - surprisingly funny even, in a dry, deadpan way - but rigidly guarded about their line of work. The thief had asked the normal questions about jobs and had been expertly deflected with self-deprecating jokes about spreadsheets and paperwork. The thief had been content to wait. The detective was a fundamentally honest person, and the thief trusted the truth would work its way to the surface soon enough.

"But that sounds exciting!" the thief prompted brightly. "I mean, daring heists executed by moonlight! It must be such a nice change from your run-of-the-mill crimes."

"Mostly it's just exhausting," sighed the detective, rubbing their temples. "This perp is such an asshole."

The thief blinked. "Excuse me?"

The detective shook their head, tried to force a smile. "I'm sorry. I've had too much wine. You were saying about your invitation to audition for the Bolshoi -?"

"Oh, forget about me," the thief said quickly. "Please, go on. You're clearly stressed about -"

"Do you know," the detective went on as if they'd never stopped, "the morning guy on Channel Seven had the nerve to call this a victimless crime?"

"Well, the insurance will pay for it," the thief started.

The detective slapped the table. The thief jumped. "What about the people?" the detective exclaimed. A few nearby heads turned in their direction. "Are people supposed to walk into museums and look at what, framed checks on the wall from Lloyds? And meanwhile, these masterworks disappear into the vaults of gangsters and petty criminals, never to be seen again. Because you can be sure," they added, jabbing a finger at the thief, "crooks that steal art have no love for it. They'll destroy it, every lick of paint, if there's the slightest risk to their own skins."

The detective took another deep swallow of red wine. They looked close to tears. The thief awkwardly patted their hand across the table. This was not at all what they'd expected on this little reconnaissance side mission. The detective caught their hand and squeezed it with a grateful look that wrenched something in the thief's upper chest area.

"Now those guys," the detective said thoughtfully. "The criminals with the vaults. Now that seems like a worthy target."

"I... huh?" The thief stared across the table. The detective looked back with those guileless, honest eyes. 

"I'm just saying," they said, with the slightest drunken slur on their words. "Walking the art out of some budget-strapped public facility is one thing. But emptying out of one of those vaults, liberating all those works of art and returning them to their rightful place before the public..." The detective sighed dreamily. "Now that actually sounds like a daring, hot shot kind of heist."

There was a moment where neither moved, gazing at each other like the lovers they were pretending to be. Then the detective tugged their hand free, stood up with an apologetic smile. "But I'm definitely tipsy," they said. "Let me go splash some water on my face."

When the detective returned from the restroom, the thief was still at the table, watching the waiter clear the plates. By unspoken agreement, they didn't speak until she was well clear.

"So, hypothetically speaking," the thief said finally, running a finger theough a puddle on the tabletop. "How would one go about this vault heist of yours?"

The detective smiled again, nothing drunk or vague about it at all.

honestly Anakin and Padmé’s secret marriage has so much comedy potential and TCW did not take advantage of that at all

I’m talking ridiculous sitcom hijinks

Anakin diving out of Padmé’s high rise Coruscanti apartment in his knickers to avoid getting caught

Padmé sneaking into the Temple to hang out with her husband, gets caught by some random Jedi, claims she’s there to meet... uh... Master Yoda??? Gets roped into having tea with him for the next 4 hours

They get sent on some diplomatic mission together... (with Ahsoka maybe?). it all goes tits up as per usual... they *have* to kiss to avoid getting caught. they get super into it. Ahsoka coughs loudly like “the bad guys have been gone for five minutes”

Someone asks Anakin why he’s visiting Padmé’s apartment. he claims he’s there to fix her washing machine. Ends up doing odd jobs for every single resident of 500 Republica to keep his cover

My BIGGEST pet peeve when it comes to Tolkien is how people will sometimes characterize Melkor’s rebellion as being about him wanting to do his own thing and rebelling against Illuvatar’s oppressive sheet music.

THERE WAS NO SHEET MUSIC!  Illuvatar wasn’t forcing anything.  The Ainulindale was improv.  Illuvatar just gave them the theme, the idea, the feeling, the starting point.  The Ainur were drawing inspiration from the thought of Illuvatar, sure, and so long as they were in harmony the music played precisely as Illuvatar intended because Illuvatar had created them and knew how they worked together.  But the music of the Ainur before Melkor’s dissonance was quintessentially creative, as well as corroborative.  It was spontaneous, perfect harmony of free individuals perfectly in tune with each other, whose improvisations were constantly building upon each other.

Melkor’s rebellion was not about asserting his freedom of expression, because his expression was already free.  Instead it was explicitly about making his own voice louder and more important than anyone else’s, and subjugating the creativity of others to instead convince or force them to follow him exactly in repetitive unison.  And so, when Melkor’s goal became drown everyone else out, instead of make beautiful music together, his music became less creative, less innovative, and less his.

So it kind of annoys me when people talk about Melkor like he’s all for freedom of expression when he’s pretty much the opposite of that.

Fact: Lúthien mostly uses her magic through music, as a possible nod to the Ainulindale; the power of this music was enough to move the heart of Mandos himself

Fact: Arwen is often compared to Lúthien in LOTR and the Professor, to the point where it's stated that "in her the likeness of Lúthien walked in Arda once more" or something, not an exact quote

Fact: The Silmarillion does not, as far as I can tell with my bad reading comp. skills, state directly that Elrond never saw Maglor again during the Second and Third ages

Fact: Maglor was also one of the best musicians in Middle-Earth and, given his epithet "the mighty singer" could very well have possessed similar song magic to Lúthien's

Perfectly reasonable conclusion: Maglor drops by Rivendell; finds Arwen, who inherited Lúthien's gift of music; proceeds to become some incomprehensible combination of music tutor, magical teacher and disaster weird uncle to her; and sticks around for her and Elrond. There are emotional father-son reunions. There are inside jokes like "don't let the TWINS near that WATERFALL!!". Neither Maglor nor Arwen ever has to be lonely again. I continue to procrastinate on the fic.

Concerning Hobbits (of Color)

Okay it’s been a whole day and I’m still angry about that hobbit casting thing, so let’s lay down some Tolkien canon here.

Fact 1: Per Tolkien, there were originally three races of hobbit. The Stoors were a small group, they were broad and stocky, they grew facial hair, they liked rivers, and their skin color is not specified, so Tolkien probably meant them to be white (but there’s no reason they have to be, since again, not specified). The Fallohides were a tiny group, they were thin, pale and tall, they were bold and good with languages, and they like trees. The Harfoots were the distinct majority, they lived in holes, they had hairy feet, and they were brown. Tolkien is super clear on this. He explicitly calls out Harfoots as having browner skin than other hobbits when describing the races and he uses phrases like “nut-brown skin” and “long brown fingers” when describing specific hobbits to back it up.

Fact 2: Britain planted its ravenous imperial flag firmly in the soil of India three centuries before Tolkien wrote The Hobbit. He knew what a brown person looked like. He would know he was not evoking a slightly darker shade of Caucasian when he said a person had brown skin.

Fact 3: Bilbo, Frodo, and all of their friends are aristocracy. Sam is the only hobbit we ever meet who is an actual laborer. In Tolkien’s time, laborers worked in the sun and middle class and aristocracy stayed inside where there was something resembling temperature control. Apart from Sam and Aragorn, no one in the Fellowship (or Company) ever voluntarily got a sunburn. If Tolkien talks about brown skin he’s talking about brown skin, not a farmer’s tan.

Where does this leave us?

Well, Tolkien says that after colonizing the Shire, the three hobbit races mingled more closely and became one. This leaves us with two options.

Option A: He’s talking about that thing that sci-fi writers sometimes do where “everyone is mixed race.” So all three races would have smeared together into a single uniform color. What color? Mostly Harfoot, aka brown. The “strong strain of Fallohide” in the Tookish and Brandybuck lines means maybe they’re white-passing, but in this scenario all hobbits are brown.

Option B: He’s talking about a more melting-pot scenario where visual racial distinctions still exist but everyone lives side-by-side in a fairly uniform culure. The Tooks/Brandybucks having a “strong strain of Fallohide” means that they are themselves remaining strains of Fallohide, and are straight-up white. Merry, half Took and half Brandybuck, is thus white (possibly part Stoor, given Brandybuck comfort with water); Pippin, half Took and half Banks, is either white or biracial. The Baggins family, sensible owners of the oldest and most venerable hobbit-hole anyone knows of, are blatantly Harfoot, making Bilbo and Frodo (half Took and half Brandybuck respectively) also biracial. Fallohides being exclusively adventurous high-class types, and the Gamgees being staid low-class homebodies with a distrust of moving water, Sam is obviously Harfoot and thus completely brown. (Smeagol, a Stoor, is probably white, but as discussed above, doesn’t have to be.) In this scenario, a minimum of three of five heroic hobbits are various shades of brown, four out of five of them could be, and most background hobbits are brown.

In conclusion, if you think all hobbits are white, you are canonically wrong. If you geek out over Aragorn wearing the Ring of Barahir, rage about Faramir trying to take the Ring, and do not even notice, much less complain, that Sam, Bilbo and Frodo are being erroneously portrayed by white guys, you need to reexamine the focus of your nerdery.