protodile

According to Wikipedia, it works by hidden rubber mallets on the naturally-musical stalactites that tourguides have been knocking on for over a century. The guy who made the organ may have gotten the idea when his son whacked his head on a stalactite.

Here’s a video. It is hauntingly beautiful.

https://youtu.be/HsKUUn29tSs

I’ve been checking some of the other large Tolkien fan communities (theonering.net, Tolkien Society, Silmarillion Writers’ Guild) to see if anyone has released a statement about the new policies, but I haven’t seen anything yet; nearly all discussion so far has been relegated to the site’s new appearance and the new artwork released on it. (Although there is this hilarious Reddit discussion about the new policies.)

I’m not sure how many Tolkien fanfic sites are left since I only use AO3, but this makes me wonder what could happen to the fanfic sites that haven’t yet moved their archives onto AO3 and don’t have the protection of AO3′s lawyers, should the estate decide to crack down on Tolkien fanfic sites. This could really deal a blow to some of those communities if the estate firmly enforces the new policies.

Plus, this:

Almost every damn country in the world has a Tolkien Society! They’re not for profit, they live from donations and do literally nothing else except a) sit around and discuss Tolkien’s work and b) promote Tolkien’s work at events. They’re literally providing free advertising. Now who wants to bet that these annual licenses will be prohibitively expensive??

Oh, they also don’t want any music inspired by Tolkien’s works…

other things they want to be able to deny people permission for:

Any public readings of Tolkien’s work, even non-commercial ones. Tolkien Reading Day has been a well-established event in the fandom for years, and they would very much like this to not be a thing.

Documentaries. They will only accept requests from “established commercial broadcasters” so I guess that rules out video essays and other amateur documentaries.

Using his name in the “promotion” of “events or festivals”. What is an event or festival? Well, I don’t know, but it’s a good thing the pandemic isn’t over yet, ‘cause if you had planned a Tolkien panel/talk/whatever at a con (of any kind) that would potentially fall under this. To reiterate: If you want to talk about his works at a conference you essentially need permission to do so.

Fanzines, or more specifically: “Unfortunately permission cannot be given for publications which use the name TOLKIEN or the Tolkien Estate’s copyright materials”. Of course “fanzine” is a very broad category and also, it clearly says “publication”. So essentially, you are not allowed to independently publish critical analysis of Tolkien’s work, ever.

Making songs for Tolkien’s poetry. Honestly this probably pisses me off the most. Tell me the professor wouldn’t be absolutely delighted by the vast number of artists who have made songs out of his words.

In conclusion, you may only interact with his work by giving money to the Tolkien estate, you may not talk about his work, you may not take inspiration from his work, you may not utter his name without asking permission (and presumably paying a license fee).

I wanted to work on these more but my computer mysteriously ate all the files and I had to recover the gifs from a Patreon post. I don’t feel like scrubbing through the gifs frame by frame and tracing them to complete the animations, so, welp. Centaur aliens from Runaway to the Stars usually walk on their four hind legs (hence why they’re often called centaurs by Jovian English speakers), but hexapodal gaits come just as easily to them, and are generally preferred for faster movement. In order: a six-legged sprint, alternating tripods trot, and ‘rolling’ walk. Alternating tripods can also be a walk if you remove the airtime and decrease the stride length. There’s a LOT of possible gaits for hexapodal motion. This is just a few of the more natural ones.

Shop is reopened! A lot of Big Cat themed stuff! :D Enjoy!