almost home

JVL
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

Kiana Khansmith
trying on a metaphor

pixel skylines
Mike Driver
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me


izzy's playlists!
occasionally subtle

★
YOU ARE THE REASON

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Sade Olutola
Stranger Things
Peter Solarz
seen from United States
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@nothing2c

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William Hawkins
“if it’s not plot relevant, cut it!!” is such awful writing advice
if JRR Tolkien had cut every bit of Lord of the Rings that wasn’t directly related to the central plot, it would have been just one book long, COLOURLESS and DULL AS DIRT.
all the little worldbuilding/character details are what draw you in and give the central plot weight, FOOL
The plot is not the same thing as the story. The plot is the mechanics of how one thing causes another.
Some classic stories have no plot to speak of – the characters just wander from one situation to the next. Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz are examples.
Some stories have partial plots, where some things in the story cause other things, but other things come out of the blue and pass away without consequence. This category includes classics too: Huckleberry Finn, The Wind in the Willows.
Even in stories with a strong plot, sometimes the most iconic moments fall outside that plot. Think of the No-Man’s-Land scene in Wonder Woman or the dying dinosaur in Jurassic World II.
Ah, but those aren’t classics, I hear someone say. Well, I disagree in the case of Wonder Woman (although time will tell), but let’s go right to the top of the English canon, Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
What’s the most iconic scene, if you had to pick one to illustrate for the front cover or the playbill poster? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s the Yorick skull scene. What does that have to do with the plot? Precious little. It’s just a way to keep Hamlet busy until Ophelia’s funeral arrives. And even there it’s not very well fit for purpose, because it doesn’t explain why Hamlet is hanging around in a graveyard anyway.
That’s because, tight though the plot of Hamlet is, the story of Hamlet is not reducible to its plot. Hamlet is a three-hour exploration of death and skulls and murder and corpses and funerals and ghosts and “what dreams may come”. The plot is just there to drive you around between the features of that mental landscape.
So the question isn’t “Does this serve the plot?” The question is “Does this help explore the idea that the story is about?”
(Why yes, I have written all this somewhere before.)
YES, ALL OF THIS
Yeah, but if Tolkien had cut a bit of the descriptions, not even a lot, the books would be more accessible. I have problems focusing as do many people I know that make reading Lord of the Rings nearly impossible while the Hobbit isn’t a struggle at all.
Why does the onus lie on the artist to make it accessible, rather than the viewer/reader to figure out techniques to comprehend it?
Roots and Beginnings: "The Sea-Bell, or Frodo's Dreme" by J.R.R. Tolkien
If The Lord of the Rings espouses one value over all others it’s the value of friendship. Frodo succeeds and survives and Sauron is destroyed only through the concerted effort, concern, and care of his friends, his Fellowship. And yes, I say Frodo succeeds, though in the end he succumbs to the lure of the Ring; he chose to befriend Gollum, and even though Gollum did not or could not live up to that trust, it was through that trust that the quest was fulfilled. Friendship was the answer. By the time Frodo returns home from his adventures, the bond between the surviving members of the Fellowship, particularly the four Hobbits, is unbreakable.
So what an absolute punch to the gut it is that this wonderful person, this world-changing hero, has nightmares in which he’s doomed to be alone for eternity. That’s the idea behind “The Sea-Bell, or Frodo’s Dreme,” a poem that appeared in the collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil that purports to represent Frodo’s state of mind during the two years he spent in the Shire after the end of the War of the Ring before departing Middle-earth for the West. Surrounded by friends who love him and care for him, the gratitude of men and elves and dwarves and kings and wizards laid at his feet, he still feels unreachable.
The poem is laden with uncomfortable reflections of Frodo’s real experiences, revealing his lingering guilt and fear. When the protagonist travels to the far green country where he expects to find great joy, everyone and everything he encounters flees at his coming. The ocean, which for all Frodo’s life has been a subject of awe and longing, becomes an eerie, empty void, bearing him here and there with no more meaning in the destination than flotsam would find. Frodo, of course, will sail from Middle-earth to the Undying Lands in the West just a few months after writing this; in effect he is dreading his own forthcoming trip to Heaven. How awful, even though we know it works out alright for him in the end.
The dreme-Frodo additionally attempts to make contact with others by crowning himself a makeshift king, demanding with tongue in cheek that his subjects come forth. For this he is laid low by shadow for a year, emerging grey and broken. The guilt of his self-betrayal in Mount Doom, the moment where the Ring finally corrupted him and he proclaimed it his, weighs heavily on him. And when his dreme-self finally returns to his native land, he wanders about like a wraith, invisible and inaudible to the people he sees. His stabbing with the morgul-blade on Weathertop, his use of the Ring – they are still with him, and the nightmare state of undeath they showed him is all his unconscious mind can see for itself in its future.
I was just a kid when I first read this, of course, but even then I knew something more was going on with The Lord of the Rings than it was given credit for. Black and white bad guys and good guys notwithstanding, Frodo was broken by victory. His adventure left him permanently scarred, physically and emotionally. His happy ending required him to leave his friends and his home and, essentially, die, to be reborn in a happier world. Until that point, all he could do was write down dreams in which his only hope was to be acknowledged, to be seen. After all he’s done, after all he’s accomplished – because of all he’s done and accomplished – he wants nothing more than for someone to reach for him, and to feel he’s been reached.
I walked by the sea, and there came to me, as a star-beam on the wet sand, a white shell like a sea-bell; trembling it lay in my wet hand. In my fingers shaken I heard waken a ding within, by a harbour bar a buoy swinging, a call ringing over endless seas, faint now and far. Then I saw a boat silently float On the night-tide, empty and grey. ‘It is later than late! Why do we wait?‘ I lept in and cried: ‘Bear me away!' It bore me away, wetted with spray, wrapped in a mist, wound in a sleep, to a forgotten strand in a strange land. In the twilight beyond the deep I heard a sea-bell swing in the swell, dinging, dinging, and the breakers roar on the hidden teeth of a perilous reef; and at last I came to a long shore. White it glimmered, and the sea simmered with star-mirrors in a silver net; cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone in the moon-foam were gleaming wet. Glittering sand slid through my hand, Dust of pearl and jewel-grist, Trumpets of opal, roses of coral, Flutes of green and amethyst. But under cliff-eaves there were glooming caves, weed-curtained, dark and grey; a cold air stirred in my hair, and the light waned, as I hurried away. Down from a hill ran a green rill; its water I drank to my heart’s ease. Up its fountain-stair to a country fair of ever-eve I came, far from the seas, climbing into meadows of fluttering shadows; flowers lay there like fallen stars, and on a blue pool, glassy and cool, like floating moons the nenuphars. Alders were sleeping, and willows weeping by a slow river of rippling weeds; gladdon-swords guarded the fords, and green spears, and arrow-reeds. There was echo of song all the evening long down in the valley, many a thing running to and fro: hares white as snow, voles out of holes; moths on the wing with lantern-eyes; in quiet surpise brocks were staring out of dark doors. I heard dancing there, music in the air, feet going quick on the green floors. But wherever I came it was ever the same: the feet fled, and all was still; never a greeting, only the fleeting pipes, voices, horns on the hill. Of river-leaves and the rush-sheaves I made me a mantle of jewel-green, a tall wand to hold, and a flag of gold; my eyes shone like the star-sheen. With flowers crowned I stood on a mound, and shrill as a call at cock-crow Proudly I cried, 'Why do you hide? Why do none speak, wherever I go? Here now I stand, king of this land, with gladdon-sword and reed-mace. Answer my call! Come forth all! Speak to me words! Show me a face!' Black came a cloud as a night-shroud. Like a dark mole groping I went, to the ground falling, on my hands crawling with eyes blind and my back bent. I crept to a wood: silent it stood in its dead leaves; bare were its boughs. There must I sit, wandering in wit, while owls snored in their hollow house. For a year and day there must I stay: beetles were tapping in the rotten trees, spiders were weaving, in the mould heaving puffballs loomed about my knees. At last there came light in my long night, and I saw my hair hanging grey. ‘Bent though I be, I must find the sea! I have lost myself, ,and I know not the way, but let me be gone!’ Then I stumbled on; like a hunting bat shadow was over me; in my ears dinned a withering wind, and with ragged briars I tried to cover me. My hands were torn and my knees worn, and years were heavy upon my back, when the rain in my face took a salt taste, and I smelled the smell of sea-wrack. Birds came sailing, mewing, wailing; I heard voices in cold caves, seals barking, and rocks snarling, and in spout-holes the gulping of waves. Winter came fast; into a mist I passed, to land’s end my years I bore; Snow was in the air, ice in my hair, darkness was lying on the last shore. There still afloat waited the boat, in the tide lifting, its prow tossing. Wearily I lay, as it bore me away, the waves climbing, the seas crossing, passing old hulls clustered with gulls and great ships laden with light, coming to haven, dark as a raven, silent as snow, deep in the night. Houses were shuttered, wind round them muttered, roads were empty. I sat by a door, and where drizzling rain poured down a drain I cast away all that I bore: in my clutching hand some grains of sand, And a sea-shell silent and dead. Never will my ear that bell hear, never my feet that shore tread, never again, as in sad lane, in blind alley and in long street ragged I walk. To myself I talk; For still they speak not, men that I meet.
✨Finished✨
"But as the host of Fingolfin marched into Mithrim the Sun rose flaming in the West; and Fingolfin unfurled his blue and silver banners, and blew his horns, and flowers sprang beneath his marching feet, and the ages of the stars were ended."
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, (Of the Return of the Noldor).

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rip to the person who understood this comic the most
"Sorry i reported you" scam making it's rounds here.
I'm not even banned.
Vague details.
Doesn't just start with the reason for contact.
You submit help to www.tumblr.com/support or help.tumblr.com. NOT the links provided in the photos.
the proof of email photo is crunchy as hell. Looks old too.
Why do i have to contact them to confirm my innocence. lmao.
What is the scam? You rush to prove your innocence to the email and they will respond back to you needing to verify your login info and then steal your account. easy. Discord and Steam have a version of this too.
a surprise gift from marriage plot chinese translator ssao that has simply sent me to outer space!!!!!!! chainmail lingerie elrond from ch 8 :’)
Elrond’s fingers hesitate at his collarbone—face lowered, pulse fluttering in his throat.
“Does my lord wish to appraise me?”
LOOK at HIM!!!!
to catch a bus you have to think like a bus

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::jurassic park theme played on a kazoo::
PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES dir. Richard Quine
Sorry, my what? My pronouns? Oh, yeah I'm between genders at the moment. No, it's cool, I quit my last gender a little while ago because it really wasn't working out. I don't know if I even have a dream gender anymore.
Oh yeah, it did come with benefits, but they weren't really worth it. The culture was really toxic. To be honest I think I'd prefer a part-time gender so I can just be self-described in my spare time.
I mean, in a perfect world we wouldn't need gender, you know? We could just voluntarily be perceived as much as we're able, as much as makes us feel fulfilled. Having a full-time gender shouldn't be a prerequisite for food, shelter, and healthcare.
I love that the pandemic actually definitively proved a lot of those "hard" questions for us. Masking up reduced cases of the flu to almost nonexistent numbers and we had zero flu deaths for a time. The welfare and social service and unemployment programs helped keep people living paycheck to paycheck out of poverty, and those stimulus checks some folks keep complaining about actually massively benefitted the common man and the economy. Individual personal travel was so extremely restricted on a global scale that we basically have concrete proof that individual restraint in terms of driving cars or travelling means absolutely nothing by comparison because the mass pollution is coming from the fisheries and the corporations with private jets and container ships. Working from home actually has massive benefits for a company like productivity boosts and better mental health of employees while also saving gas
and we're just. Willingly going back to how everything was before. We were shown how to do things better and the people in charge said "that's nice but we just want to get everything 'back to normal' :)"
we’re not willingly going back to how everything was before. we are being forced back into it by members of the ruling class who found out that making things better for almost everyone else made them feel bad.
Let's not forget about any of these things. Let's reblog and schedule this post to pop in in the future to remind us of what we may have forgotten a little.
Do not forget.
The skies were free from pollution because flying & driving was extremely restricted.
Traffic jams disappeared because people who could were working from home.
On the other hand, we learned "essential workers" were positions like supermarket cashiers and delivery drivers.

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announcing...
Here are the prompts for this year's Barduil October event! We have thirty-one prompts with a variety of vibes. You can write, draw, make a moodboard, make a playlist, or perform an interpretive dance to one, some, many, or all of the prompts - just be sure to tag @bi-widower-dads so one of the mods can share it on the blog! Please feel free to drop an ask or message @scary-grace if you have any questions.
In the meantime, let's give our favorite dads a very interesting October. We can't wait to see what everyone creates!