renenetest

Faramir: Hey, don’t go up the Spider Stairs.

Frodo: Why? What’s up the Spider Stairs?

They do live in a world where godzillarantulas feature prominently in mythology and history (Ungoliant plunged the world into darkness, scared the crap out of Sauron’s old boss, etc) and existed within the last century in Mirkwood. Assuming they ever talk to anyone who’s been to Mirkwood. They… probably know they were giant spiders in Mirkwood pretty recently? It’s hard to figure out how much anyone in Middle-earth has been talking to anyone else when we didn’t actually see it.

On the other hand – what if it’s the giant evil spiders’ prominence in history/mythology that’s causing trouble? What if lots of evil/nasty things/places get called “spider” just to indicate how nasty and evil they are, rather than any association with literal spiders, and it’s just… overloaded? Maybe the bad part of town in Minas Tirith is the Spider District. Maybe every tavern trying to be edgy calls itself the Spiderweb.

Actually spider/Ungoliant references could be really appealing to Gondorians trying to be edgy. They’re dark and evil! Plunged the world into darkness! But they AREN’T involved in the war they’re actually fighting, they aren’t directly associated with Sauron at all, so getting too interested in them would be creepy without being potentially treasonous. Because no one’s ACTUALLY going to worship those dangerous but not epic spiders up in Mirkwood, and no one’s heard anything from any proper spawn of Ungoliant in ages and ages.

In fact, spider/Ungoliant references might be appealing to ORCS trying to express that something is nasty and creepy! Nobody likes Ungoliant.

Maybe Faramir’s been to fourteen different Spider Caves across Ithilien, and half of them he didn’t even see regular spiders in, they’re just dark and damp and may have had orcs at some point, or something, and at some point in history someone got spooked. So you know, it’s POSSIBLE Spider Pass has something to do with spiders? But really it just means people don’t like it.

He lived, managed to get out of the caldera, took extensive notes on the landscape, eventunally met up with some Blackfoot tribesmen who gave him a horse and directions to the nearest european settlement, and he left, naming every single notable feature after hell or the Devil, because Wyoming is clearly His Infernal Country.

Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers Additional Tags: Advent Calendar Series: Part 19 of 4 Minute Window  (PART 19!!!!!!!)

This is the master post for the 4 Minute Window Advent calendar 2021! (*boggles*) As always, my goal is to tell a little bit of story each day (knock wood) between the Immaculate Conception and Christmas. Explicit eventually, the rest as it comes. Times being what they are, we might be even more loosey-goosey than normal. Apologies if I come in late or there are typos etc. but I’ll get it all done and patched up eventually. As always, feel free to send me your hopes and dreams and I’ll see what I can do!

I note also that this year there’s a secondary, related project being posted on Tumblr called “4 Inch Window” - @melllacita is building a DOLLHOUSE REPLICA of the Coney Island Design & Construction building where Steve and Bucky work and live. She’s posting pictures of it in progress and telling you lots about how to build awesome dollhouses. The prologue is here or you can follow @melllacita’s tumblr for all the 4 inch window updates.

Hope you enjoy!

so cool under pressure

so calm in a crisis

great at handling difficult situations, for example, can get his own gloves off WHILE talking to a cute girl AT the same time no problem thanks for asking

so great at witty comebacks

definitely has slept with MANY a lady because, again, Han Solo is a cool guy, and not a grumpy hermit who, were he a person in the world, would spend all his weekends alone in his apartment with his phone turned off watching Ice Road Truckers

definitely not a weirdo with a shitty haircut who talks to his car

no. mister cool guy. always looks so cool. so cool in a fight

so cool. never panics about everything all the time constantly.

people trust him cause he’s got that cool guy charisma

always knows what he’s doing. han solo. an expert.

…you guys…

Just read an excerpt from a productivity/goal setting book that concerned Tolkien.

His publisher mentioned that people wanted more about the hobbits after Tolkien published The Hobbit.

So Tolkien started another novel.

And apparently bounced between the depths of despair and the height of confidence for the entire process (he said that: “his ‘labour of delight’ had been ‘transformed into a nightmare.’”)

He gave up multiple times.

That book? Fellowship of the Ring.

You know what kept him going? C.S. Lewis’ support.

First lesson: if you’re stressing over your book, remember that Tolkien did too.

You know what else kept him going while he wrote Lord of the Rings? Well, 

having an income while he wrote, that he didn’t really have to work for. In fact, he held his dream job (Professor of Literature) with a full-time income, that came with a pleasant private office. He sat at work, for which he was being paid to do something else, and actively avoided doing his actual job while he pursued his own unrelated novel.

having a stay-at-home wife to run his entire home and family for him.

having servants…. that helps….

having a large, pretty house within a pleasant 25-minute walk of work.

never having to do:

household maintenance

laundry

cooking

cleaning

Life Admin

the not-fun gardening

the not-fun childcare

The work day of Men of His Time ended when they came home. Women of His Time, and Staff, existed to run the rest of his life. And that’s what they did. Jonald Ronald Rolkien Tolkien was the center of his household universe, which existed to support him in every possible way.

Let’s be real: he was not the person who was up in the night with a teething baby. That was what the nanny was for, followed by the wife. It would have been unthinkable for a man of his time/class to do his own childcare.

Actually, it’s worth noting that he had in particular a Very Intelligent Icelandic nanny, who lived in his house and looked after his four children all day, and was never given a holiday, and told the children lovely bedtime stories about trolls and the Icelandic Edda, and who provided a useful resource for the language and myth he used in LoTR, until his wife became too jealous.

I mean, what could YOU do if you had that much support? Write an epic! probably!!

Because nobody was forcing him to do anything, ever, he slept late and woke up late. sounds nice

Tolkien did not do laundry. He did not cook meals. He did not clean the house. He did not wrestle rice pudding down the necks of his screaming babies, while calmly and lovingly answering his schoolchild’s questions. He wasn’t making a cake while talking to his boss on the phone and wiping up the dog’s sick. He did not spend hours every day in the process of keeping his home together, or sorting the affairs of his four children, or sorting out the wifi. The Care and Keeping of Tolkien was outsourced to wife, servants, scouts, assistants, waitstaff.

He would have received free meals at work, although he usually walked home for lunch, where he was served food and alcohol that he took into his private study. but if he didn’t want to do that, Oxford profs of His Time could just get free lunch. He could ring a bell to be brought tea and snacks at work. And then he would go home and be served dinner.

Going to the pub with his friends, who supported and admired him! Sure!

not having to go home in the evening to his four toddlers and children, because he was a Man of His Times! and he could totally just spend evenings holed up in a pub with his admirers, because he was not required at home to help, or parent, or do anything in the home, except be served a glass of beer and go into his study.

god, imagine spending hours in the pub on a work night with a bunch of highly qualified literature professors telling you how smart and lovely and amazing you are. heck YES you’d be encouraged.

The Hobbit was already popular so it was probably quite helpful to know that while writing the next work.

Working and writing in a place that is generally considered to be an inspiring setting for academia and literature. Want to write Elrond’s Council? Sit down at a beautiful old stone table and start writing about the table. Want to write about a tree? Go write under your favorite ancient tree in the Botanical Gardens. Want a snack? Ring a bell and a scout will bring you toast and a cup of tea.

I mean, he wasn’t exactly spending his 40 hours a week under a manager’s baleful eye while he manned the self-checkouts at the Tesco in Coventry, or pumped gas for minimum wage in Montauk, scribbling notes into his phone. He floated around The City of Dreaming Spires, dreamily making art, while several people labored very hard so that he would be untroubled by Real Life while he floated.

Let’s be real. Tolkien’s literary accomplishments are very impressive, but he L I T E R A L L Y

was doing them on his work clock with the full support of a pit crew.

To be fair, I love the man. And I love the huffy apologism in the Tolkien Gateway: “Writing  [The Fellowship of the Ring] was slow due to Tolkien’s perfectionism, and was frequently interrupted by his obligations as an examiner, and other academic duties.”

I’m ??? sorry that writing a novel on the company dime was frequently interrupted by occasionally having to do his job???? oh my god I love and hate this so much,

Dianna Wynne Jones, of Tolkien’s students at Oxford, commenting “of Tolkien, they said he was wasting his time on hobbits when he should have been writing learned articles…”

maybe because that’s what academics are SUPPOSED TO DO, it is their job,,,

He would also deliberately mumble incomprehensibly, ignoring his students, deliberately delivering terrible lectures, so that they would all go away; but Dianna actually wanted to receive some of the education she’d been promised:

“I imagine I caused Tolkien much grief by turning up to hear him lecture week after week, while he was trying to wrap his lectures up after a fortnight and get on with The Lord of the Rings (you could do that in those days, if you lacked an audience, and still get paid).”

God love the man! Deliberately teaching so badly because he planned to alienate his students and collect a paycheck! He would be flayed on social media for less, today. There would be news articles about the Lazy Professor. He would be fired, and buried, and dug up, and fired again.

“When I was an undergraduate, I went to a course of lectures he gave on the subject—at least, I think that was the subject, because Tolkien was all but inaudible. He evidently hated lecturing, and I suspect he also hated giving his thoughts away. At any rate, within two weeks he succeeded in reducing his substantial audience to myself and four others. We stuck on, despite his efforts. He worked at it: when it did appear that we might be hearing what he said, it was his custom to turn around and address the blackboard.”

and it looks pretty normal, right?

WRONG