#catadromously

Halloween papercraft of this gorgeous artwork by @catadromously. I love the idea of chickens holding a seance and accidentally summoning their dinosaur ancestor.

Have to confess, I got an hour into those little feather and bone details and seriously reconsidered all my life choices, but I am so happy with how it turned out. <3

Thanks again to catadromously for permission!

TOLKIEN GEN WEEK 2022

DAY FIVE: Culture ● Diversity ● Traditions From the Noldor of Tirion to the Men of Rhûn to the Dwarves of the Orocarni and beyond, Tolkien created many distinct societies and cultures—but often didn’t tell us much about them! How do these cultures differ from one another and interact with each other? What political, religious, economic, and social structures exist? How do different places view disability, orientation, gender, race, and other points of diversity? What traditions do they pass down from generation to generation, and how did they evolve? This is a day to consider the factors of society on the lives of your favorite characters.

These prompts are optional, and we are open to any gen content whether or not you stick to our suggestions!

Please tag your posts with #tolkiengenweek AND @ mention this blog @tolkiengenweek so they can be easily found. If your submission turns into a long post, please put what you can beneath a “Keep reading” divider. If you are posting your submission to AO3, you can add it to the event collection here.

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!!! First of all, @catadromously thank you for blessing my blog with this amazing ask! It was the last push I needed to fall into Siron Family Grief, and I basically went mad as I was trying to answer. Then tumblr deleted my draft instead of saving it, so. I’m giving up on any pretence of coherency

Sometimes the underworld is above you. (aaaaaaaaaa)

I definitely see it, principally in Earendil’s journeying beyond the confines of the world, as much as “up” and “down” are applicable to the void.

Elwing? I feel like she has a two-part story. First, falling into the sea: a submersion. If the sea is an underworld of some sort, a representation of, idk, the primordial waters of tohu wa-bohu, then perhaps this part can be viewed as proper katabasis?

Secondly, her temporary metamorphosis into a bird: theJourney to Vingilót. (If/when the sea acts as some sort of holy water of transformative qualities.) Being lifted into the air, being turned into a celestial bride/divine wife/etc, now this can be “anabasis,” maybe? I’ve read exactly one Elwing-centered fic in my life (shame!!) and written none so far, but it feels like this flight over the sea would be the dramatic point where she has to make sense of her marriage. (Earendil embraced her, but which did he recognize, the bird or the stone? There is a whole feminine tragedy buried here, jirt, you bastard.)

What they end up as, though: eternal “ship’s captain'' and eternal “lady in the tower,” these states don’t have a function of self-discovery, so I wouldn’t call them reverse katabasis (unless.)

(Unless it’s regarding that part of Earendil's motivations that is running from his "normal" roles and responsibilities? He has to face, very young, in quick succession, the challenges of orphanhood, rulership, and being a paterfamilias - and immediately fucks off to sea on a quest to Intercede For Elvendom And Humanity Because It's End Times… Then he wins it all. The world is saved. He will be a distant father, unattainable husband, eternal mariner of the celestial waters. Then the aeons on the sky he can no longer turn back from, might just be a descent into hell every night.)

and I know one day we will find our way and the salt in our bones will teach our children of home

Ah, thanks for asking! You know how I love to blabber on. :)

-Asked by @catadromously Answer: Admittedly I would say ‘a man after the sort of king Earnur of old’ is likely more very specific to gay men. As far as aroace folk go in Gondor, it’s a known and accepted practice to just never get married and there are various rituals and lifestyle changes you can make to kinda signify that that’s your intention that are considered honourable and understood by most. ‘Not wanting a wife’ is less meaningful than ‘like King Earnur of old’ in the context of what the sentence is telling us. So I’d say there wouldn’t be any specifically aroace hinting because, especially aro’s, would face general culture wide erasure. It would be shocking to consider someone couldn’t fall in love. 

I think the kinds of struggles aroace Gondorians would find is in the heavily prevalent ‘romance idolisation’ of Gondor. Whilst it’s perfectly accepted to choose not to marry, the idea of not being ABLE to have romantic feelings probably fucks with a lot of people but tends to be very invisible to Gondorian society as a whole. But, as ever and in general, the common trauma across the entire queer spectrum in Gondor is structured around pity and a rejection of the ‘sympathy’ which queers associate with damaging medicalisation of their identities etc etc tHIS GOT DARKER THAN I MEANT IT I’ve just been thinking a lot- ANYWAY. 

Hints about such things have to be VERY couched by a lot of other possible interpretations. Gondorian society just is!! Very!! It’s very prudish about really even the CONCEPT of sexuality, let alone the idea that it could be directed towards ‘unsuitable’ areas. 

BUT LETS START WITH THE BASICS! All manner of queers come under the general umbrella of being ‘ill-fated’ in Gondor. This is not an exclusive label and many other things can be called ‘ill-fated’ without it having queer connotations but it’s a little add on that you can stick onto the end of other sentences that can veer an understanding in the right direction. Ill-fated here has a more personal and weighted meaning, since Gondorians have a concept of a person’s ‘fate’, that fate can be corrupted or bestowed wrongly and influences your whole life and, most particularly, your romantic life. 

People are supposed to all have soulmates and marriage for any reason other than love is unthinkable, because you have a fated person! However if that fated person is somehow ‘unsuitable’ then you are ‘ill-fated’. It denotes something tragic about your destiny and spirit and also has a kind of suggestion that you can drag other people down around you. Hence people who are ‘ill-fated’ have a mixture of pity and fear directed their way. 

THIS GOT DARK AGAIN. SORRY. IMPORTANT CONTEXT. So, for gay men, one might say things like ‘he settled well to the sea life, but I fear an ill wind took him there’ or ‘the army welcomed him too easily, I hope his doom takes him to fairer paths’ or if you want to REALLy toe the line ‘he wants to be lead to the river’ with the lesbian equivolent of ‘she won’t be lead to the river’ is as gay innuendo as you can get in Gondor and EVEN THEN it still has a main meaning of ‘the guy isn’t confident/the girl is headstrong in love’ etc. (this is because a boy leading a girl to a river is the initiation in courting, dont worry dont worry I’ll get to it, it’ll have a post)

this is MOSTLY true but you have missed a crucial piece of information. in my fictional dimension i would be BEATING ON THE WALLS, demanding to be sent a link to irl tumblr, so that i could make a blog presenting myself as kin of myself. this is SO important to me. it is the #1 thing i would do if sent to a dimension where my life story is a fiction. would this inevitably cause a mental breakdown as i become more and more afraid that i am delusional for thinking that i am myself and all my friends are just humoring me? absolutely. would it also be fucking hilarious? also yes!!!!!!

that said i am so delighted by everyone going “yeah there would be SO much discourse about you as a person if you were fictional”. i am the pineapple-on-pizza of people